


Half of My Soul, as the Poets Say

by mixtapesandsunsets



Category: Schitt's Creek
Genre: (kind of), Alcohol, Alternate Universe - Soulmates, F/F, Fluff and Smut, Light Angst, Recreational Drug Use
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-12-06
Updated: 2020-12-06
Packaged: 2021-03-10 02:41:30
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 20,218
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27766918
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/mixtapesandsunsets/pseuds/mixtapesandsunsets
Summary: Yes,she imagines telling the Alexis of two years ago, who had felt so untethered sitting next to Twyla outside these very rooms.You believe in fate. Your fate is right in front of you, Lex, you just need to reach out to meet it. It’s her. It has always been her.
Relationships: Alexis Rose/Twyla Sands, Brief Theodore "Ted" Mullens/Alexis Rose
Comments: 14
Kudos: 55
Collections: Schitt's Creek: Frozen Over (2020)





	Half of My Soul, as the Poets Say

**Author's Note:**

  * In response to a prompt by Anonymous in the [SCFrozenOver2020](https://archiveofourown.org/collections/SCFrozenOver2020) collection. 



> **Prompt:**
> 
> When Alexis Rose is thirteen years old, she steals a Maserati from her family's garage and drives away. It's the fifth night of Hanukkah, the house is bustling with preparations for her parents' annual holiday party, and she intends to be far away by the time the guests arrive. Her family doesn't notice her when she's present. Maybe they'll notice her when she's gone. 
> 
> Forty minutes from home, she hears a voice say - or maybe sing - _Stop!_ It startles her so much that she obeys, wiggling down in the driver's seat and slamming her foot on the brake. Half a second later, a truck careens by, sliding on black ice, its driver struggling to gain control. 
> 
> The voice comes back time and time again. _Stop, you're allergic to pitted fruits_ , when she's in the Maldives, coconut in hand. _Stop, he's lying to you,_ halfway into Leo's limousine. _Stop, no more,_ when something like hurt passes over David's face when she's sniping at him. 
> 
> It follows her everywhere. She wonders if she's crazy, but she never tells a therapist about it. She trusts the voice. It's never steered her wrong. 
> 
> And then: one Christmas Eve, in the small town of Schitt's Creek, Twyla Sands sings the first few bars of "Silent Night" on her own, beatific smile bright and beautiful as a candle. 
> 
> And Alexis knows that voice.
> 
> \-----
> 
> Title from the wonderful "Song of Achilles" by Madeline Miller.

**~2002~**

Alexis’s hand is holding David’s over the shamash. It’s just after sunset, the sky outside a deep purple. Together, they say the blessing in Hebrew and light five candles on the silver menorah in David’s bedroom window. 

They replace the shamash, moving to sit against David’s bed on the floor, facing the menorah. They sing _Maoz Tzur_ , and for a moment, it feels almost like they’re kids again.

But they’re not, and things are different now. In the past, their father would be the one lighting the menorah while David and Alexis watched in awe. Their mother would be there too, watching with a small smile on her face. It wasn’t her holiday, but she still observed it with them back then. But as the years went on, the Rose’s holiday party got bigger and bigger, taking up more of Moira and Johnny’s time and attention to make sure it went how they wanted it to, and David and Alexis started celebrating Chanukah on their own. 

Now the candles shine brightly in David’s bedroom window, pushing back against the darkness. 

Alexis had always liked that; the symbolism of it. “Victory of light over darkness,” their father had explained to her once when she was still small enough to sit on his lap, still small enough to hang onto his every word with the unquestioning trust of a child. 

It had been a long time since she was that small. 

Alexis and David stayed there, watching the candles burn down for their allotted 30 minutes. Afterwards, David smiles at her and stands up. 

“Where are you going?” she asks him, moving to get up as well.

“Mom wants to rehearse our number for tonight. Besides, it’s only a few hours before the guests arrive. You’ll have to start getting ready soon.”

“Mmhmm. Good luck.”

“Thanks.” 

Alexis pauses outside David’s room, watching him walk away. She won’t see him until he and their mother perform at the party tonight, and even then she’ll only see him from a distance. He probably wouldn’t even notice if she wasn’t there.

Actually… Alexis wonders if anyone would notice if she wasn’t there. They definitely didn’t notice when she _was_ there. Every year during this stupid party she feels like she’s in the backseat of her own body, seeing more than feeling her parents’ friends pinch at her cheeks while exclaiming how beautiful she is, how great it is to see her, and then immediately calling her the wrong name. Every interaction is just a reminder that they don’t know her at all, really, but at least for a minute they _try_. But then they walk away and she’s no one again, just a ghost of a teenager floating among hundreds of rich adults who are most of the way to being sloppy drunk on expensive champagne by 8 pm.

She usually doesn’t speak to her parents once throughout the event. Sometimes, afterwards, her father will come looking for them. She tries to be in bed pretending to sleep or at a friend’s house by then. She’s never in the mood for her father’s attention when he’s finally ready to give it to her. Too little, too late. 

Alexis realizes she’s made up her mind without even trying to. She goes to her bedroom and grabs her purse, making her way to the garage. The house is bustling with preparations, their normal help frantically shouting directions to the caterers, musicians, decorators, and whatever other roles her parents had hired this year. Adelina squeezes her shoulder as she passes her, and Alexis flashes her a genuine smile. 

“Where are you going, mija?” she raises her voice to ask Alexis over the noise. 

“Just to get some air!” Alexis feels a pang of guilt for lying, but Adelina would be heading home soon anyways. She wouldn’t know any different. 

Regardless, Adelina just gives her a knowing smile. She has worked for the Roses for years, and she has always been David and Alexis’s favorite. She was the closest thing they had to a parent at times. “Okay, but grab a jacket! It’s cold out there.”

“Okay,” Alexis answers, doubling back quickly to kiss her on the cheek. “Merry Christmas, Adelina.”

“Happy Chanukah, mija.”

\-----

Five minutes later, she’s pulling out of the driveway in one of her father’s Maseratis (with her coat on, because she _does_ listen, thank you very much). She’s 13, but she’s tall and can easily pass for much older when people aren’t looking too closely, or when she’s wearing the right makeup. The fake driver’s license she has with her now says that she’s 19. She got it mostly so she could drink, but it turns out that David really hates driving and only does it if he absolutely has to, so it comes in handy for getting them around as well.

She doesn’t really know where she’s headed; she just knows she needs to go. She intends to be far away from that house by the time the guests arrive. She has plenty of cash with her, so she could always just get a hotel for the night if she gets tired of driving. She turns onto the first freeway entrance ramp she sees, heading west. 

She’s only about 40 minutes away from home when she hears a voice say - or maybe sing - _“Stop!”_ It startles her so much that she obeys, slamming her foot on the brake and steering the car onto the shoulder. Half a second later a semi truck comes careening by, sliding on what must be black ice. In the split second it’s in her view, Alexis can see the driver desperately trying to regain control. She watches, her hands sweating, but after a few more seconds the truck seems to be back on track.

She lets out a shaky exhale, turning her attention to whatever - or _who_ ever - warned her. She turns around, but there’s no one sitting in the car’s sleek leather seats behind her. She pulls her phone out of her purse, flipping it open, but it looks normal. There isn’t an active phone call. She doesn’t even have any notifications that might have made a noise. She looks up at the dashboard, and the radio is off. 

She allows herself one deep breath, closing her eyes tightly, then opens them again. “Hello?” she asks.

No one answers.

“Is - is anyone here?”

The silence stretches on, and Alexis is starting to get antsy. Okay. Whatever. No matter what that was, she can’t stay on the side of the freeway waiting to find out. She needs to get moving again. Hands shaking, she shifts the car into drive. When she’s sure no one is coming, she pulls back out onto the road. 

She drives for another few minutes, and just as she starts to really convince herself that she hadn’t heard anything in the first place she hears it again. 

“ _Go home,”_ it says. Or… sings? It’s hard to describe what the voice sounds like. It’s really unlike anything she’s ever heard before, which is not a comforting thought. She nearly slams on the brakes again, but there are headlights in her rearview mirror now and the last thing she wants to do is cause an accident after narrowly avoiding one five minutes previously. She’s nearly hyperventilating, her hands so tight on the steering wheel that they ache, but when she comes across the next exit she takes it. 

\-----

After all of that, she’s only half an hour late to the party. No one notices. Her father’s business partner, who she’s seen at least three times per year since she was an infant, calls her “Alice”.

She takes champagne from the passing waitstaff. No one stops her. These people, at least, know who she is, and they aren’t willing to risk upsetting the daughter of the man who signed their check tonight. 

She gets drunk enough that she can barely make it up the stairs at the end of the night. She feels like her mother. 

When her father comes to see her a little while later, she is laying in bed in the dark, pretending to sleep.

He closes her bedroom door with a _click_. It isn’t satisfying the way Alexis wants it to be. It never is.

**~2005~**

_“Stop, you’re allergic to pitted fruits,”_ the voice says as Alexis goes to take her first sip of a margarita out of a coconut. 

It’s spring break, and she’s with some friends at a resort in the Maldives. Alexis had jumped at the chance to escape the chilly Swedish spring for a week.

Alexis’s eyebrows pinch, confused. 

“Um, coconuts aren’t pitted fruits,” she replies out loud. Which isn’t great because a) now Reighleigh and Miami probably think she’s crazy and b) the voice never responds anyways, so really there’s no point in even trying.

Luckily, Alexis overestimated the other girls’ critical thinking, because Miami just says, “Oh, they are stone fruits actually! Isn’t that weird? Like, I was _so_ shocked when I found out, because why are they called coco _nuts_ if they’re actually coco _stone fruits_?”

Alexis fakes a laugh. “Mm, totally.” She gives her margarita to Reighleigh with a sigh. Watching her get plastered isn’t even close to as fun as drinking it herself, but Alexis figures it’s better than going into anaphylactic shock.

**~2010~**

“ _Stop, he’s lying to you.”_

Alexis freezes immediately, pulling her hand away from Leo’s. He turns back to her from where he was opening the door to his limousine, mouth slack and pupils blown enough to almost completely cover his irises. Alexis had watched, smoking a joint, as he’d done several lines of cocaine tonight. Almost everything she did was with the intention of making her feel better, or at least feel _something,_ but there were some lines (no pun intended) she wouldn’t cross. Half of her high school friends ended up addicted or dead, and Alexis didn’t want that. It wasn’t worth the high.

“What?” Leo asks.

“I just remembered I have to meet up with my brother tonight. I have to go.”

“Come on babe.” He reaches out toward her. Alexis takes a step back. “It’s already almost two in the morning. Just see him tomorrow.”

“No, I need to see him tonight. I’ll see you later, okay?”

“No!” Leo shouts. Alexis recoils, shocked. “You bitch! Get in the fucking car!”

He reaches out to grab her again, but Alexis grabs his wrist and twists it, hard. He cries out.

“Don’t you _ever_ touch me,” she hisses, reaching out her other hand out to press into the exact point on his neck that would drop his blood pressure enough to knock him out. It doesn’t take much with his body so overloaded with cocaine. 

She takes a moment to breathe deeply, staring at his limp form on the concrete. She lets her lips quirk up into a half smile, thinking of what a good idea it’d been to let Evan Rachel Wood teach her jiu jitsu on that movie set when they were teenagers. Finally she sighs, reaching down and dragging him into the limo, shutting the door behind him.

She goes and taps on the driver’s window. He rolls it down, looking at her with wide eyes. He must have seen all that, then. “Take him home, alright? He’s too out of it to go anywhere else.”

The man nods, and she pats the door as she turns to leave. She walks until she finds a payphone, calling for a car and sitting down on the curb to wait. 

“Thank you,” she whispers. The voice doesn’t answer, of course. Why would it? This had been going on for almost eight years now, and sometimes she resents it. She tends to be afraid of things she can’t control, and the voice certainly falls into that category. Regardless of how she feels about it, though, the voice has never steered her wrong. At this point, she takes everything it says to her as fact. 

After the first time, she’d spent hours on the big bulky computer in her dorm room at her boarding school searching up different variations of “voice in my head” and “conscience” and even “guardian angel”. The overwhelming consensus was schizophrenia, which. Well. Even now, Alexis supposes it’s possible, but the only ‘symptom’ she’d ever had was the voice, and it only came once in a while. Only when she was in some kind of danger. She’d never had any kind of visual hallucinations that she was aware of, or delusions, or disordered thinking. Eventually, she just convinced herself that it was her own instinct, protecting her from harm. Just in an… unusual way. 

She never brought it up to her therapist. 

She tried to bring it up to David once, when they were getting high on the roof of their parents’ house one winter night a few years ago. It was the day before the annual holiday party, so Alexis had been thinking about the voice a lot, and also getting high a lot so she could try to forget about both the voice and how much she hated being at her parents’ house (naturally, she didn’t succeed in forgetting about either). 

They’d been up there for almost an hour, and Alexis was pretty confident that David was high enough to not remember this clearly in the morning. 

“David, do you ever hear voices? Like, in your head?” Even with his eyes glazed over from the weed, the look he gave her - part worry, part disbelief - made her stomach clench. She schooled her features into a playful smile. “I’m kidding,” she said, reaching for the joint. “Jeez, David, so serious.” He just smiled back, handing over the joint with a shake of his head. 

Alexis took a hit, looking away from him and toward the lights of the other massive houses through the trees. A few years ago David would never have believed her when she tried to make it into a joke. He would have pushed, and it would have pissed Alexis off but also warmed her, too, to know that David knew her well enough to tell when something _mattered_ . She tried not to care that he didn’t know her now. She tried not to care that _she_ barely knew her now. She blew out a puff of smoke, and imagined that it was her that was floating up into the cold winter air and fading away.

**~2014~**

“At least I don’t have to pay people to be friends with me, David!”

“ _Stop, no more,”_ the voice says as Alexis spots something like hurt flashing across David’s face.

Alexis’s shoulders droop instantly. “Shit. I shouldn’t have said that. I just wanted to hurt you. It’s not true. I’m… I’m sorry, David.”

The expression on David’s face is so openly shocked now that Alexis would laugh if the situation was different. Honestly, Alexis is surprised at herself too. Neither of them had ever been good at apologizing, and it had only gotten worse as they’d grown apart. They had come to their parents’ for dinner because they were both in the greater area, but before tonight they hadn’t seen each other in almost a year. But even with that Alexis couldn’t stand the thought of knowingly hurting David - the only person who had always been there for her, even when she didn’t deserve it. She feels sudden, crushing guilt about all of the times she must have hurt him in the past just because a fucking disembodied voice didn’t tell her to stop.

But David is shaking his head, his mouth pinched. “No. You’re right.”

Alexis reaches out as if to touch him, but she pauses halfway there, her hand falling back to her side awkwardly. “No, David, I’m not. Anyone would be lucky to have you as a friend. And… and I’m lucky to have you as a brother. I’m sorry I don’t always act like it.”

David is quiet for a moment as he tilts his head to the side a bit, considering her. “We’re pretty fucked up, aren’t we?”

Alexis chokes out a surprised laugh. “Yeah. We really are.”

\----- 

That year, David comes to stay with her and they celebrate Chanukah together, just like when they were young. They even make latkes, doing their best to follow a tutorial made by a sweet old Jewish woman on YouTube. They don’t come out... good, necessarily, but they’re edible. 

“We’ll do better next year,” David says confidently. 

Alexis nods, feeling the sort of hopefulness that she hasn’t felt in years. 

**~2015~**

Three months later she’s packing up her penthouse in NYC, and then she’s on a plane back to her parents’, and then she’s packing up her things in her childhood bedroom in a frenzy while people in suits carry out her family’s furniture, and then she’s sitting next to David on a bus on the way to a town with a stupid name. 

\-----

The waitress at the only restaurant in town is exactly the kind of person that Alexis would normally make fun of with David as soon as she turned away. Her jeans are ill-fitting, she’s wearing truly hideous sneakers, and the chain of her necklace is way too long for the cut of the blouse that she’s wearing. 

But they make eye contact, and she forgets to think about all those things. Alexis loses her breath, and David has to nudge her to get her to take the absurdly large menu that the woman is trying to hand her. There’s something in her voice that’s... familiar, in a way, something that tugs at Alexis, like she should know something but she can’t quite put her finger on what it is. 

“I’m Twyla,” she says, and Alexis wants to look away to read the menu but all she can do is watch her mouth move as she speaks to her parents. 

The woman - Twyla - walks away, and her mother immediately turns toward her. “I forbid you to abandon our family,” she says haughtily. 

Alexis wants to be angry, and to a point she succeeds. She hates when her mother talks to her like this. But then she thinks of the way Twyla’s eyes widened almost imperceptibly when they made eye contact, almost as if she recognized her too. She thinks of how she’d spent the last three - almost four - months exhausting herself trying to be what Stavros wanted, without him ever trying to be what she wanted. Without ever giving her any indication that he cared about her at all, honestly. She thinks about how hurt _she’d_ be if David left her here with their parents who may as well be strangers.

“I’m not,” Alexis says, or rather hears herself saying. “I’m staying.”

She breaks up with Stavros that night. He doesn’t care at all, which she expected, but it still hurts. David pretends to be exasperated, but he lets her put on one of his sweaters and brushes out and braids her hair that night, just like when they were kids, and they lay in their tiny beds and talk in the dark until her eyes ache from exhaustion instead of from sadness.

\-----

She starts community service with Mutt, who is somehow actually attractive despite presumably sharing genes with Roland Schitt. 

He mentions in passing one day that he’s dating Twyla, and Alexis finds herself disappointed. She tells herself it’s because she is jealous of Twyla. She tells herself it’s Mutt that she wants. She’s a pretty convincing liar, honestly; it’s a skill that has gotten her out of many sticky situations during her life. She was able to convince a Cambodian military leader that she hadn’t smuggled anyone over the border in 2012 even though he’d _seen_ her do it, but she isn’t able to convince herself of this. She knows that whether she likes it or not, she is disappointed because she wants to be the one dating Twyla.

But really, what was Alexis expecting? She and Twyla hadn’t even talked outside of the café, and when they had talked at the café Twyla had given no further indication that she felt anything of the things Alexis does. And it's not like Alexis understands her feelings in the first place.

So Alexis does her best to pretend that she imagined whatever she’d thought happened that first day at the café, and that she doesn’t feel as if Twyla’s voice sounds like something her soul knows the sound of. 

She does her community service with Mutt, and she actually enjoys it. He’s a nice guy, at least compared to the guys she normally spends time with. Alexis could even see herself being friends with him, maybe, if she let herself. She orders smoothies from Twyla after her runs, and they rarely taste good but Twyla is always so happy when Alexis asks for them, and Alexis realizes that she could see herself being friends with Twyla too. That she _wants_ to be friends with Twyla too, if she could just figure out _how_. She has always been better at making friends with guys because she knows what she has to offer them. Even for guys like Mutt, who she would never try to sleep with (Alexis used to sleep with anyone she wanted, regardless of their relationship status, but not anymore, not when it’s Twyla she’d be hurting), Alexis knows how to make them like her. Guys are predictable for her that way. Easy. She doesn’t know what she could possibly offer Twyla, who is kind and open in all the ways that Alexis has never learned how to be. 

Then, one day, the cute veterinarian flirts with her, and she flirts back, and then they’re dating.

\-----

Ted is really sweet, which kind of makes Alexis sad. She knows right away that she doesn’t deserve someone like him, that she doesn’t even want to be with him, really, but she lets it happen anyway. 

They have dinner with Twyla, Mutt, David, and Stevie, and Ted is a wonderful host, and he’s wonderful to her guests, if a little awkward about it.

They have sex that night after everyone leaves, and Ted is so caring, so attentive. It’s good sex, as it always is, but then Ted is looking into her eyes and telling her he loves her while he fucks her, and Alexis has the sudden, gut-sinking realization that she never should have let it get this far, never should have let it happen at all. 

But that’s not really something she can deal with while he’s buried inside of her, so she just does her best to smile, knowing it probably shouldn’t be convincing, but also knowing he doesn’t know her well enough to notice. That she hasn’t _let_ him know her well enough to notice. She wraps her arms around him more tightly, letting her nails dig into his ass, and he groans and fucks her harder, resting his forehead against her shoulder. It’s easier when she can't see his face.

Later, Ted is snoring next to her, and Alexis cries silently until the pillow under her head is wet against her skin.

She knows she needs to break up with him, but then he wakes her up the next morning with a sweet smile, a coffee fixed how she likes it, and a perfectly toasted bagel, and she just can’t make herself do it.

\-----

A few weeks later, as they’re doing their community service, Mutt confides that he feels like his relationship with Twyla has run its course. 

Alexis frowns, thinking of how Twyla had told her yesterday that she was working on writing a song for him.

“Have you told her that?” she asks him.

He pauses, sighing. “No. Not yet. I don’t want to hurt her.”

Alexis thinks of Ted, who she’s still dating, who she’s meeting for dinner at the café in a few hours. 

“Yeah,” Alexis says. “I get that. But I think she’ll be more hurt if you don’t tell her.”

Mutt nods, and gazes at her with his lips pulled up into a sad smile. “I think you should take your own advice, Alexis.”

Alexis’s heart starts pounding in the way that’s usually reserved for when she’s locked in someone’s trunk, trying to untie the knots in the rope around her wrists.

“What?” she asks, trying to laugh. “Ted and I are fine, Mutt. We’re great.”

Mutt just shakes his head. “Okay, Alexis.” He says it kindly. Alexis knows that _he_ knows that it’s bullshit, but she’s sure that he’ll let it go if she isn’t willing to talk about it. He’s that kind of person.

They continue painting the fence in silence for a few minutes. 

“He’s so sweet, Mutt. He deserves someone who can love him the way he loves me.” Alexis’s voice is just on the edge of shaking, but she manages to hold it steady.

Mutt doesn’t look over at her, just keeps repainting the spots that she missed. “Tell him that. You’re right, he’s a good guy. He won’t resent you for being honest with him.”

Alexis hums, trying to focus on the paintbrush in her hand instead of the fact that she’s kind of a terrible person. It’s a thought that she’s having more and more trouble avoiding these days. 

Mutt squeezes her shoulder when they part ways, a little like David sometimes does. She gives him a shaky smile. He wishes her good luck, and as Alexis walks away she thinks that she can do it. That she _will_ do it, tonight.

\-----

She doesn’t do it. 

But it isn’t her fault this time. Really! She’s sitting across the booth from Ted (who looks very nice in a sharp little button up), and before Twyla even brings out the food they ordered Ted is pulling a velvet box out of his pocket. 

Alexis is holding a wine glass, and she watches distantly as the liquid inside begins to slosh gently as her hand starts shaking. 

“Alexis,” Ted says. His voice holds a depth of emotion that Alexis tries very hard not to think about.

“Ted,” Alexis answers levelly. “What are you doing?”

He smiles. Alexis shakes her head. 

“Alexis, I really love you. I want to be with you.”

Alexis grips her wine glass tighter, trying to push down the nearly incapacitating wave of anxiety that’s moving through her chest. They’d only been together three months, and she knew she shouldn’t have let it go on this long but she never thought, she _never_ thought...

“Ted…” she says, her voice tight, shaking her head again. She’s holding the wine glass so tightly that her arm is nearly vibrating with the exertion. 

“Alexis Rose, will you marry me?” 

Alexis sets the glass down before she does something stupid like spill red wine on the $5000 white dress that she can’t afford to replace anymore. She’s moved from emotional to practical without even trying. Another one of her skills, she thinks numbly. 

“Ted,” she says, and she doesn’t recognize her own voice. “I can’t marry you.” Ted’s face falls. “You’re the perfect partner. You’re just not the perfect partner for me. You deserve to be with someone who can love you the way you deserve. And that can’t be me. I’m…” Suddenly, the emotions are back and Alexis feels like she can’t breathe. The nearly desperate need to escape comes over her and she grabs onto that, thankful for something familiar. “I’m sorry.” She reaches into her purse, her fingers shaking as she grabs a $20 bill and sets it on the table for the food she wouldn’t be eating. “I’m so sorry.”

She slides out of the booth and leaves the café, not daring to glance up.

She barely makes it ten feet before she’s yanking off her heels and sprinting barefoot in a dinner dress down Main Street, her hair flying out behind her, ruining her carefully crafted curls.

By the time she gets back to the motel, she’s panting. She’s not sure if it’s from the run or from her panic, but she tries to calm down a bit before she goes inside - she thinks David might have a heart attack if he laid eyes on her in this state. She sits down awkwardly in an old lawn chair that Stevie had dug out to appease her parents, watching the wispy clouds drift through the darkening sky over the trees and catching her breath. By the time she goes inside her breathing is steady but her hair is still tangled and face flushed, eyes a little wild. 

David hardly takes one look at her before he's coaxing her toward the bathroom to take a shower. By the time she gets out and has pulled on the pair of leggings and David's old OCAD University sweatshirt that he'd left on the sink for her, David is sitting on his bed, giving her a half smile and shaking a ziplock bag of weed.

Despite herself, Alexis grins. 

\-----

They sit outside in the lawn chairs, passing a joint between them.

They don’t speak for a long time. Finally, Alexis sighs. “Ted proposed.”

David literally spits out the sip of water he’d just taken, which makes Alexis giggle. “He fucking _what_?!”

“I know.”

When she glances over, David is doing that scrunchy thing with his face that means he’s trying very, very hard to not say the wrong thing. “And you, um. What did you say? To Ted?”

“I told him that I couldn’t marry him. I told him he deserves someone who can love him the way he deserves but that it, um, it couldn’t be me.”

David nods. “I’m sorry, Alexis.”

“Yeah. Me too. I, um, I was going to break up with him tonight. Like, I had fully decided that tonight was it. But I didn’t get a chance and he was pulling out a fucking ring and -”

“Hey,” David says gently, cutting off her words, which had dramatically increased in speed. “It’s okay. It sucks that it had to happen like this, but it’s over.”

“Yeah. Yeah, you’re right.”

“I always am,” David says, and Alexis rolls her eyes, biting her lip to stop her smile. 

\-----

The next morning Alexis pulls on some high waisted athletic leggings and a hot pink sports bra. She blasts her high energy playlist through her earbuds and starts running, determined to feel better. 

She runs for longer than usual, making it almost five miles before she finally slows, walking the rest of the way to the café so she hopefully won’t look too sweaty by the time she gets there.

Twyla smiles sweetly at her when she comes in, and when she hands Alexis the smoothie their fingers brush. 

Alexis goes to reach into her pocket for cash, but Twyla shakes her head. “On the house,” she says.

Alexis quirks up her lips, tapping the counter. “Thanks, Twy.”

Twyla nods. “Are you okay, Alexis?”

Alexis opens her mouth to say she’s fine, but snaps it closed. Something about Twyla makes her want to be more honest than she’d usually ever dare to be. “I will be,” she says simply, and Twyla’s smile grows. 

“Yeah,” she says. “You will be.”

\-----

For the next few days, she continues going on longer and longer runs. She starts to consider training to run a marathon or something, just to give herself something to do. She doesn’t hate this town as much as she’d expected she would, but it definitely gets boring. There’s a limit to how many hours she can handle sitting in a room with David.

Today she gets to the café and immediately knows that something is off. Twyla greets her like she normally does, so Alexis orders her smoothie and sits at the counter while Twyla collects ingredients. She watches her carefully and she seems fine, but Alexis can’t shake the feeling that something is different today.

A few minutes later Twyla sets the smoothie on the counter, giving Alexis a smile that doesn’t quite reach her eyes. 

“Are you okay, Twy?” Alexis asks before she turns away.

Twyla freezes, her mouth opening briefly and then closing again. “Oh,” she breathes. “Um, yeah. But Mutt and I broke up.”

Alexis reaches across the counter, not quite touching Twyla’s hand but resting her own near it. “I’m really sorry.” 

Twyla shrugs. “It sucks, but I’ll be okay.”

Alexis nods, thinking of what Twyla had said to her a few days prior. “Yeah, Twy. You will.”

Twyla smiles, resting her hand over Alexis’s lightly. “Thanks, Alexis.”

Alexis smiles back, flipping her hand over and briefly squeezing Twyla’s. When she pulls away, she grabs a napkin from the dispenser on the counter, trying not to look at the sticky spot on the top. “D’you have a pen I could borrow, Twy?”

Twyla nods, reaching into her apron and handing Alexis a pen. Alexis scribbles down her phone number, writing her name and a little heart beneath it. She hands Twyla the napkin along with her pen. Twyla takes it, and her smile is a tiny, secret thing. 

“That’s my phone number. Um. Obviously. So if you ever want to talk, you can, like, text me.” Twyla’s smile is amused now. Alexis laughs self consciously. “God, sorry, I sound like a lunatic. I guess I’m not very good at this whole, um, making friends thing.”

Twyla shakes her head, her smile still in place. “You’re doing fine, Alexis. I’ll text you, okay?” Alexis watches as Twyla glances down at the counter then back up to Alexis’s face, looking almost shy. “Maybe we can make plans to hang out sometime.”

Alexis feels her face splitting into a grin and tries to school her features into something more neutral. She’s pretty sure she fails. “Yeah, Twy. I’d like that.”

\-----

A few months later, things are… going surprisingly well, actually? She and Ted are friends now, at least as much as you can be with someone whose proposal you rejected. She even ends up working as a receptionist at his clinic. She admits to David and Stevie that it's harder than she thought, but only after she has a few drinks in her. She's embarrassed that she isn't perfect at it. She doesn't like beginning. But Stevie just smiles at her, and that Saturday she drags Alexis into the motel office, pulling up two chairs in front of the ancient desktop computer and showing her how to use Excel. Alexis appreciates it so much she doesn't know what to do with herself, so she settles on buying Stevie a few of the dark mystery books she likes when the single church in town has a rummage sale the next day. Stevie smiles at her uncertainly when she hands them to her and allows Alexis to hug her tightly. She even hugs her back, and when Alexis whispers “I’m so glad I met you”, Stevie doesn’t answer, but she does squeeze her a little tighter.

She and Mutt don’t see much of each other now that they both finished their community service, but they try to meet up once a month for drinks. Alexis gets the feeling that Mutt is interested in her, but she does her very best to not lead him on. She isn’t interested in Mutt. 

She is, unfortunately, still interested in Twyla. But she and Twyla are friends now, or at least Alexis thinks they are, and honestly that’s more than Alexis ever could have hoped for. They’ve gone out to get drinks a couple of times, and one day they drove out to Elmdale with Stevie and David for lunch. She's more than happy to just be friends. 

Alexis finds that it's nice, having friends. _Real_ friends, not just people who she only wants to see when they're going to be drinking or doing drugs. She enjoys spending time with them always, even if it's just to sit on the dirty old couch in the motel office with Stevie or to talk to Twyla across the counter when she has a couple minutes between customers. She likes when Twyla texts her about weird customers and when Stevie knocks on the door to her and David's room without any warning, carrying a pizza and a six-pack of beer.

\-----

In September, just as the sweltering summer heat is receding and the leaves are starting to turn, Stevie and Twyla drag Alexis and David out to a bonfire party. Alexis remembered their first experience when they had just moved here and dressed down: a pair of black skinny jeans with her Docs and a white v-neck, a pleather jacket on top (when David had seen her outfit, he'd told her it was 'the most bisexual thing' he'd ever seen, which Alexis chose to take as a compliment) _._ Twyla and Stevie meet them at the motel to walk there, since it is - like everything in Schitt's Creek - right down the road. 

Twyla's eyes widen a bit when Alexis steps out, and Alexis pouts. "Should I change, Twy?" 

Twyla's eyes widen further and she shakes her head. "No, no, that's perfect! You, um, you look really good. I just haven't seen you in anything like that before."

While Twyla talked, Alexis's mouth shifted from a pout into a broad, genuine smile. "Oh! Thank you, Twy. You look beautiful too, as always."

Alexis watches Twyla's cheeks turn pink. "Thanks, Alexis."

David finishes locking the door and they start walking, he and Alexis falling in step behind Stevie and Twyla. 

"Flirting much?" David murmurs to her. 

"Step on a nail, David," she hisses back. The smug look he gives her really makes her want to trip him, but she manages not to. Barely.

\-----

The second they get there, some guy who is apparently Twyla's cousin hands them all red solo cups that contain… something. It smells like artificial fruit and cheap alcohol. She glances over at David, and he looks just as nervous. 

"Is this, like, jungle juice?" Alexis asks Twyla. 

"Yeah, basically! I'm not sure what's in this one," Twyla replies, swilling the drink around the cup. She takes a sip. "Hm. It's not bad, though."

Alexis takes a careful sip as well, barely repressing a gag. "Oh, wow. It tastes a little like cough syrup." Twyla laughs, a twinkling thing, and Alexis decides that the drink isn't so bad after all. 

\-----

Within an hour, David and Stevie have disappeared to do beer bongs and Twyla pulls Alexis over to the fire where someone has left out some stuff for s'mores. 

"Are you sure it's okay for us to use this?" Alexis asks nervously as Twyla pokes a couple of marshmallows on a metal stick. 

"Yeah, 'course! You wanna make one?" Twyla's voice is just slightly slurred from the two full cups of whatever it was she'd drank, and it makes Alexis smile. 

"No. That's okay, Twy. I don't like how sticky they are."

"Aw, Alexis, that's no fun! I can feed it to you if you don't want to touch it."

"That is literally _so_ sweet babe, but it's okay." 

Twyla pouts at her, just for a second, but then she's smiling again as she lifts her flaming marshmallow from the fire, blowing it out. She pulls it off of the stick with two graham crackers and a piece of chocolate, holding it out for Alexis to see.

“It looks great, Twy.” 

Twyla nods seriously. “You sure you don’t want a bite?” 

Alexis pauses, then shrugs. “Fine. But just a little one.”

Twyla’s smile is incandescent, and she holds the s’more out to Alexis. Alexis takes a tiny bite, managing to not smear marshmallow all over her face. 

“Thanks, Twy.” 

Before Twyla can respond, David and Stevie stumble back over to them. 

“I won!” David slurs directly into Alexis’s ear. Alexis winces, drawing back while also reaching one arm out to stop Stevie from falling directly into the fire.

“Wow. Seems like you guys had fun,” Twyla says, amused. 

“Yeah, some guys challenged us to a competition” Stevie answers, nodding and then stumbling again. Alexis pulls her closer with the arm she still has across Stevie’s back. She leans into Alexis’s side and grins at Twyla.

“Can I have a s’more?”

“Ooo, I want one too!” David exclaims. 

“Sure. Why don’t you guys let me make them?”

 _Thank you,_ Alexis mouths to Twyla over Stevie’s head. Twyla winks. This time, Alexis has to stop _herself_ from tripping into the fire.

David and Stevie agree, and Alexis leads them over to a large log to sit. 

“Do you have a crush on Twyla?” David asks in a stage whisper.

“Oh my god, David, shut _up_!” Alexis hisses, glancing back to see if Twyla heard. If she did, she isn’t giving any indication. 

“You do,” Stevie says surely. “She does,” she says, turning to David. 

“If you both don’t shut up right now I will throw you into the fire myself.”

“That would be mean,” David says so seriously that Alexis can’t help but laugh. 

“After you guys eat your s’mores I think we should head home, okay? You guys are gonna feel awful tomorrow morning if you don’t get water and some sleep soon.”

Stevie frowns. “But we didn’t even smoke my weed yet.” 

“Okay, I definitely don’t think you guys need any weed tonight. We can save it for next time.”

Stevie shakes her head and digs into her pocket, handing a baggy with a few joints over to Alexis. “You an’ Twy can have it if you want.”

“Oh, okay. Thanks.” Alexis zips the baggy up into her jacket pocket. 

Just then, Twyla comes back over and hands David and Stevie each a s’more. Alexis can’t help but smile at how excited they are. When she looks over at Twyla, Twyla is already looking back at her. Alexis’s smile shifts into something more shy.

“I think I should take them home when they’re done. David does _not_ do well with that much beer, he’s gonna be miserable soon.”

Twyla nods. “I’ll come with you.”

“Are you sure? I don’t want to drag you away if you’re having fun.”

“I’m having fun because you guys are here. I’d rather leave with you than stay without you.”

Alexis nods, biting her lip. “‘kay, Twy.”

Within a couple of minutes they’re shuffling David and Stevie back to the road. Stevie goes without protest, but David is hitting Alexis’s least favorite part of his drunkenness: Whiny David. 

“I’m tired.”

“I know. That’s why we’re going home.”

“But my _legs_ are tired.”

“It’s not a long walk,” Alexis says, trying to be patient.

David groans. Alexis rolls her eyes as Twyla laughs. 

\-----

When they get back to the motel, David spends several excruciating moments trying to fit the key into the lock before Twyla takes pity on him and takes over. Once inside he plops down on his bed and Alexis digs around under her bed until she finds two unopened water bottles and some ibuprofen, passing a bottle and two pills each to David and Stevie. 

“Here, you’ll need it,” she says. Then, turning her attention to Twyla, “I’ll walk you guys home, Twy.” 

“Okay!”

“Wait, aren’t you gonna smoke?” Stevie asks from where she’s sitting on the edge of Alexis’s bed.

Twyla’s brows furrow in confusion.

“Oh!” Alexis exclaims. She turns back toward Twyla. “Stevie brought weed tonight but _obviously_ she and David don’t need any, so she gave it to me for us to smoke if we want.”

Twyla pauses for a moment but then her face splits into a grin. “Yeah, that sounds good. The night is still young, right?”

\-----

Stevie ends up insisting that she will just hang out with David while Alexis and Twyla smoke outside, which Alexis thinks is very suspicious but chooses not to comment on outside of telling Stevie that she’ll make sure she and Twyla stay outside for at least 30 minutes. Stevie gapes at her, cheeks pink. Alexis just smiles, grabbing a lighter from her purse and leading Twyla outside to the same lawn chairs that she and David had smoked in.

God, had that really only been a few months ago? It felt like a lifetime had passed already, like somehow time had operated differently since they moved to Schitt’s Creek. Alexis feels like a different person, now. She hopes that’s a good thing.

She and Twyla smoke. Alexis watches the way that Twyla’s eyes crinkle when she smiles, and listens to the gentle cadence of her laughter, and feels the softness of her fingers brushing hers when they pass Stevie’s joint, and Alexis knows it’s crazy but all she can think is _this is it_. This is the feeling she’d been searching for her whole life. Sitting here outside an old motel in the middle-of-fucking-nowhere Ontario, with a woman who Alexis wouldn’t have glanced at if she was still the way she was a year ago, she feels, inexplicably, like she made it. Like all of her criss-crossing the globe in the last decade was her trying to untangle a string and when she finally managed to do it it led here. 

“What?” Twyla asks, breaking Alexis out of her absurdly profound line of thinking. Alexis refocuses and Twyla’s nose is scrunched up cutely, eyes curious.

“What what?” Alexis asks in return, hoping the tender way she feels isn’t too obvious from her voice.

“You were pretty far gone for a minute. Whatcha thinking about?”

Alexis doesn’t answer right away, leaning back in the chair and looking up at the stars. They’re so bright here. One of the perks of living so far from any big cities, Alexis supposes. After a moment, she lets out a careful breath, still gazing upwards.

“D’you believe in, like, fate?”

Twyla didn’t miss a beat. “Yes. I do.”

Alexis smiles, because of course Twyla believes. She should have known. “I never did. I hated the thought that I didn’t have full control over my life.”

“I don’t really think it’s like that,” Twyla replies softly.

Alexis turns toward her. “What d’you think it’s like, Twy?”

Twyla’s face is serene, open in a way that Alexis thinks she’ll never stop being in awe of. “I think it’s more like…” she trails off for a moment. “Like there’s somewhere you’re meant to end up, but you get to choose to be there. So every choice is still your own. But I don’t know, I think it’s kind of nice to think that there’s something waiting for you if you want it.”

Alexis swallows against the tightness in her throat. “Yeah,” she whispers. “That is a nice thought.”

\-----

“Okay, I know we said no gifts this year,” Alexis starts, twisting her hands where they rest on the table between her and David at the café. Tonight is the first night of Chanukah. They used to get each other gifts to exchange before they light the first candle every year. They’d agreed to not do it this year due to their drastically different financial situation, but Alexis saw something online and couldn’t help it.

David sets his phone down, giving her that smug smile that’s unique to him. “Mhmm.”

“But I just wanted to get you ooone little thing.” Alexis reaches down to dig into the large purse she brought and retrieves a package wrapped in tissue paper. When she looks back up at David, he is holding a package too. “David…”

“I just wanted to get you one little thing too,” he says as they exchange. The packages are roughly the same shape and size, and whatever is inside the paper is soft, like cloth.

Alexis grins, wiggling in her seat. “Chag Chanukah sameach, David.”

David’s answering smile is equal parts amused and soft. “Chag Chanukah sameach, Alexis.”

They both tear into their gifts, and after a brief pause immediately begin laughing so hard they can’t breathe. David is laughing in that way he does where it’s silent until he inhales, and then he makes a sound _exactly_ like a goose, which makes Alexis laugh harder. Alexis, for her part, is wheezing more than laughing, occasionally punctuated by a snort. After several minutes they finally manage to calm themselves down enough to speak.

“You’re - you’re joking,” David says, wiping a tear from his face.

Alexis heaves a breath, shoulders still shaking. “I can’t fucking believe this. Did you go through my search history?”

“No! I swear!” 

Alexis shakes her head, gazing at the familiar item. It’s a blue crewneck sweatshirt with white detail: in the center, in large writing, it says “CHALLAH AT YOUR GIRL” and around that is a pattern of Stars of David, loaves of challah bread, and other decorative shapes. It’s so familiar because the package David just opened contains the _exact_ same shirt, except his says “CHALLAH AT YOUR BOY”. 

David grins at her. “Okay, I’m still a little sad we can’t make latkes, but this almost makes up for it.”

Before Alexis can answer, Twyla comes over with their food. Alexis quickly grabs the discarded wrapping paper from the table and shoves it back in her bag so Twyla has room to set things down.

“Thanks!” Twyla says.

“Yeah, ‘course.” Alexis answers, smiling at her warmly. Chanukah has always made Alexis feel so much warmer. 

“What’s the occasion?” she asks, nodding to where Alexis had hastily tucked away the papers.

“Oh! Tonight is the first night of Chanukah.”

“Ah, cool! Happy Chanukah! I didn’t know you guys were Jewish. I have some cousins who are. Although, that might have just been an excuse to not come to Christmas dinner, since they didn’t tell us they were Jewish until the year after everyone got food poisoning…”

When it’s clear that that is all there is to her story, David shakes his head slightly, as if trying to dispel the image of Christmas dinner food poisoning. “We’re delightful little half-half situations, actually.”

“Mhmm,” Alexis agrees. “Our mom is Catholic, technically. She’s never been particularly devout, but we did celebrate Christmas and Chanukah growing up.”

Twyla nods in understanding. Just then, the bell above the door jingles and Twyla smiles at Alexis apologetically. “I have to go take care of them. Enjoy, guys!” She flits away, and David is gazing at Alexis knowingly when she turns back to him.

“Will you ever ask her out?” he asks quietly.

Alexis sighs. “David…”

“Seriously. I’m just asking.”

“No. No, I probably won’t.”

“ _Why_ Alexis?”

She shakes her head. “I… I like being her friend. I don’t want to lose her by, like, asking for too much.”

“I don’t think you’d lose her, Alexis. She’s a really good person. I don’t think she’d stop being your friend, even if she didn’t feel the same way. And it’s not asking for too much. It’s asking for what will make you happy.”

Alexis just shakes her head again, unable to answer. She’s afraid she’ll cry if she speaks, so she begins twisting the sweater David had given her between her fingers instead. 

“Okay. Okay, Allie, I’m sorry. We don’t have to talk about it. Let’s - let’s just eat, yeah? We can’t be sad on the first night of Chanukah.”

Alexis tries to smile, knowing by the way David is looking at her that she fails, but also knowing that he won’t call her on it, at least not right now. She picks up her fork and starts eating. 

\-----

Their dad doesn’t come to their room to light the menorah, because their mother claims to be “too bereft to celebrate” and he wants to stay with her. Even though it’d only take a few minutes and she’s literally 20 feet away in the next room. Alexis tries not to resent them for that, because it shouldn’t matter. David has been her closest and even her only family for most of her life; she’s just happy that he’s here. 

They move the furniture in the room around, pushing their beds closer to the bathroom and the table against the window so the menorahs can go on it. They reveal some stains on the carpet where their beds had been that make David gag, but he’s able to breathe through it. Ted gave her a holiday bonus, so Alexis decides that she’ll use it to hire someone to clean the carpet. After seeing this, she genuinely thinks it’s a better use of her hard-earned money than anything fun she could buy.

They each brought their menorahs, and they’ve chosen to light both. Hers is one that she bought when she started boarding school so that she could celebrate in her dorm room on years when the first few nights of Chanukah were before classes ended. David’s is the same menorah they’ve had since they were kids, and Alexis feels weirdly glad about that. There’s so many things about her past that she wants to forget, but celebrating Chanukah with David is not one of them. The familiarity of the menorah makes her feel grounded. 

They each light their shamash and then, at the same time, light the single candle. They recite both the daily blessing and the first day blessing, and replace each shamash. Then they sit on David’s bed and sing Maoz Tzur, and when they’re done they just… stare at the lights. Alexis leans over, resting her head on David’s shoulder, and he rests his cheek on her hair. Outside the window, big fluffy snowflakes are covering the cars in the parking lot. Alexis hates the snow as a rule, but even she has to admit that it’s beautiful. Everything is more beautiful during Chanukah. 

“I love you, David.”

David wraps an arm around her, squeezing briefly. “I love you too. Chag Chanukah sameach.”

“Chag Chanukah sameach,” she answers softly. _Happy Chanukah holiday._ Alexis sighs, content. It really is.

**~2016~**

“Yeah, my mother is coming over this weekend to celebrate my birthday,” Twyla is saying from across the counter, where she’s refilling some salt shakers,

“Wait. When is your birthday?” Alexis asks sharply. She had no idea it was coming up. She didn’t want it to pass without at least getting Twyla a card.

“Oh, March 19th!”

Today was only the 10th. She hadn’t missed it. “Okay. Good to know.”

“Yours is October, right?”

“Yeah, the 25th.” 

Twyla nods seriously. “Okay. I’ll remember.”

Alexis smiles. “So, what are you and your mom gonna do?”

Twyla sighs a bit, shifting her weight from foot to foot. A sign, Alexis has learned, that she’s nervous or uncomfortable.

“We don’t have to talk about it, Twy. It’s okay.”

Twyla glances up sharply, presumably shocked that Alexis could tell. She looks back down at the lid she’s screwing back onto a salt shaker and smiles briefly. “No, it’s okay. Um, I’m not sure what we’ll do. She’s planning on staying the weekend, so maybe we’ll drive into Elmdale or something one day.”

Alexis nods, trying to give a reassuring smile. “That sounds nice, Twy.”

Twyla’s lips twist downward a bit. “Yeah. It does. It just, um, usually isn’t as nice as it sounds. She has memory problems, and the last time she came over she only knew who I was about half the time. She just thinks I’m my cousin Angela, so it’s not like I’m in danger or anything but… it sucks.”

Alexis reaches over, catching Twyla’s hand in hers and rubbing her thumb over its back. Alexis is a very tactile person, and luckily she’d found out over the last year that Twyla is too. “I’m sorry, Twy. If that happens this time, you can call me and I can come over if you want. You can just introduce me as Angela’s friend or something. You don’t have to do it alone if you don’t want to, okay?”

Twyla holds Alexis’s hand in both of hers. She looks up, and the look on her face nearly takes Alexis’s breath away. Her eyes are shining with unshed tears and her mouth is twisted into a pretty little half-smile, and _god_ , Alexis loves her. She loves her. She’s loved her since the moment she saw her, maybe, or even longer than that. Her whole life. It doesn’t matter how long, really, or that Twyla doesn’t love her back. Having Twyla in her life in any capacity is enough for her. Truly. Even though the constant dull ache of longing lives in her chest, Alexis doesn’t mind. She recognizes how lucky she is to even have her as a friend, how the circumstances had to align perfectly to get her here. 

“Thank you, Lex,” Twyla says, her hands still cradling Alexis’s. 

“Of course,” Alexis answers, but what she means is “ _I’d do anything for you”_. She hopes Twyla can tell, somehow. 

\-----

She’s just getting back from a run when her phone rings, Twyla’s name and a photo from the first night they’d gone out to the Wobbly Elm together popping up on the screen.

The long Ontario winter is just now starting to let up - she hadn’t braved the cold to go on her daily runs until earlier this week, so she didn’t quite have the stamina she used to. She’d kept at least a little active doing yoga with Twyla, and she’d loved it but it wasn’t the same. Swiping to answer the call, she tried to hide how out of breath she was. “Hey, Twy!”

“Hey, Lex. Um, were you serious about coming over?” her voice comes through the phone, tentative.

“Absolutely,” Alexis says immediately. 

She can hear Twyla let out a breath, and Alexis imagines her shoulders slumping in relief. “Okay. It’s, um, it’s happening. I think I’m still going to take her to Elmdale today, if you’d want to come. There’s a bookstore she likes there.”

“Yeah! I just got back from a run, would it be okay if I came over in like 45 minutes?”

“Sure. I’ll see you then.”

“Okay, Twy.”

Alexis rushes through her shower. When she’s out and dressed, she goes over to where David is reclined on his bed, reading a book, and wordlessly hands him a hairbrush. He furrows his eyebrows. 

“Dealer’s choice,” Alexis tells him, and he pats the space in front of him on the bed. 

He begins carefully brushing out her hair. “Is everything okay?”

“Yeah. Twy’s mom is over and she has some kind of memory problems. She, um, thinks Twyla is her cousin, so I’m going to go to Elmdale with them. As, like, moral support.”

David hums. Normally this is when he’d start in on convincing Alexis that she needs to ask Twyla out, but he must be able to tell that now isn’t the time, so he just silently begins braiding her hair. 

“I guess we’re going to a bookstore, so text me if there’s anything you want me to look for there.” 

“Okay.” Within a few minutes he asks her for a hair tie and then nudges her gently, handing her back the hairbrush. 

“Thanks, David.”

“Course.”

Alexis goes back into the bathroom, quickly putting her contacts in and doing her makeup. David had done a single Dutch braid that trails down her back. Alexis sprays just a bit of hairspray to hold back any flyaways, and then she’s grabbing her purse, pulling on a pair of converse and heading out, throwing a quick goodbye to David over her shoulder.

\-----

When she knocks on Twyla's door, it opens almost immediately and Twyla all but falls into her arms. Alexis holds her tightly with one arm, stroking her free hand down through her hair. They stay like that for a long moment before a woman's voice comes from inside the apartment. 

"Angela! Who's at the door?"

Alexis feels Twyla take a shaky breath against her collarbone before she slowly pulls away, her hands still loosely holding Alexis's waist. 

"Hi Alexis," Twyla murmurs. 

Alexis reaches out to push a stray curl back behind Twyla's ear. Twyla shivers. "Hi."

"Thank you for coming. We're gonna head out soon, I just have to grab my things."

Alexis nods, and Twyla pulls away. As she walks back into her apartment, Alexis shuts the door behind her and Twyla heads into the kitchen to talk with her mother. "It's my friend Alexis. She'll be coming with us to Elmdale, remember?"

"Oh yes dear, I remember. It's nice to meet you, Alexis."

"It's nice to meet you too, Ms. Sands."

True to her word, Twyla grabs her purse and then leads them outside and to the car, locking the door behind them. Alexis goes to slip into the backseat but is stopped by Twyla's mother. 

"You can sit in the front seat, Alexis. Your legs are a lot longer than mine, I'll be more comfortable here than you would."

Alexis laughs a little. "Okay. Thank you."

She gets into the front seat next to Twyla, who shoots her a small smile. Alexis returns the smile as warmly as she can, and they start driving. 

\-----

The 40 minute drive to Elmdale passes relatively quickly. Twyla’s mom is chatty, which Alexis doesn’t mind because it means she doesn’t have to contribute much to the conversation. She spends most of the time staring out the window at the still snow-covered landscape and stealing glances over at Twyla.

She’s tense, her hands in an almost white-knuckled grip on the steering wheel. Alexis wants to reach out and brush her fingers over Twyla’s hand until it relaxes under her touch, or to rest a hand on her knee. Twyla always seems so soothed by her touch. But she doesn’t want to make her uncomfortable around her mother, so she keeps her hands to herself.

When they get there, Twyla’s mom leads the way into the store and immediately heads over to the nonfiction section (she really likes biographies, Alexis had learned on the way here), and Alexis and Twyla walk together to the fiction shelves. Suddenly she feels long fingers slip between her own, squeezing lightly. Alexis smiles, swinging their hands between them. They don’t let go until they go up to the front to pay. 

\-----

When they’re eating dinner that night, Twyla’s mother stops suddenly in the middle of a sentence. 

“Ms. Sands?” Alexis asks tentatively. “Are you okay?”

She nods absentmindedly, looking over at Twyla. “Twyla, dear, did you cook this?”

At hearing her own name, Twyla puts down her fork, hand shaking a bit. “Yes, mom. I cooked it.”

“It’s wonderful. Thank you. I should be cooking for you, we’re celebrating your birthday!”

“No, mom, I don’t - I don’t mind. I like cooking for you.” Twyla looks like she’s going to cry, so Alexis stretches her leg out under the table, pressing her ankle against Twyla’s. Twyla presses back.

\-----

Two hours later, Twyla’s mom is settling in to sleep in Twyla’s bed and Alexis stands in Twyla’s bathroom washing her hands.

( _“Will you stay a little longer?”_ Twyla had murmured to her after they’d finished dinner.

 _“As long as you want me to,”_ Alexis had answered.)

She expects to find Twyla in the living room, but it’s empty. So is the kitchen. Alexis allows herself one brief second to worry, then swallows it down. She stands still for a moment, glancing around. Suddenly she realizes that the front door is still locked from the inside, so the only other place Twyla could be is her balcony. Alexis is wearing a sweater already, but she grabs her coat since the last time she’d seen Twyla she was just wearing a t-shirt. 

She slides the glass door open and Twyla is revealed, standing near the railing with her arms wrapped around herself. The wind is biting, the snow on the ground the kind of fine powder that shifts across the landscape like sand at every gust. Alexis shuts the door behind her. 

Twyla doesn’t turn around. 

As gently as possible, Alexis wraps her own coat around Twyla’s shoulders. Twyla’s hands move to hold onto it, and Alexis takes one step to the side so she’s still slightly behind Twyla but can more easily see around her. Twyla moves just enough for her shoulder to press back into Alexis’s chest. Alexis reaches around her to place a hand on her opposite shoulder, rubbing her thumb over the fabric of the coat.

Twyla doesn’t seem to be ready to talk yet, so Alexis does something she rarely does: she waits. Patience has never been her strong suit, but Alexis can be patient for Twyla. She can be whatever Twyla needs her to be. She focuses on Twyla’s warmth pressed against her, and she waits.

“Thank you, Alexis,” Twyla says after a few minutes have passed. “It was a lot easier with you here.”

“Of course,” Alexis replies simply. “Thank you for letting me be here.”

Twyla turns around so she’s facing her, dislodging Alexis’s hand from her shoulder. 

“My family really hasn’t scared you away yet, huh?” Twyla says it like it’s a joke, but there’s a hint of anxiety in the twist of Twyla’s mouth that tells Alexis that it isn’t.

Alexis reaches forward, tugging the lapels of her coat more tightly around Twyla, then keeps her hands there. “No one could scare me away from you.” Alexis can feel the way Twyla’s chest expands with the breath she sucks in at that, so she tries to back off on the effusiveness a bit. “Besides, you deal with my family every day at work, and they’re _much_ worse.”

Twyla laughs, looking down and shaking her head. Her hair falls over her face, and when she looks back up Alexis tucks it back behind her ear again. Twyla grabs Alexis’s hand before it can fall back to her side and lifts it carefully to her mouth, pressing a kiss to her knuckles. Alexis gasps in a breath.

Twyla allows their hands to fall between them, still intertwined. They’re still for a moment, and Twyla stares into Alexis’s face as if searching for something. Alexis has no idea what she will find there, but she tries to keep her face open. She tries to let Twyla see her. 

Then, so softly that Alexis would almost think she was dreaming if not for the coldness of her fingers, Twyla reaches up to stroke Alexis’s cheek.

“Twy…” Alexis says softly, but she doesn’t know what she wants to say.

“Lex,” Twyla answers. Her voice is just as soft, and her eyes are serious. Alexis moves her hands to rest on Twyla’s waist. “I’m going to kiss you now, okay?”

Alexis takes in a shaky breath of the cold, clean air. She nods, leaning closer to Twyla. “Okay,” she whispers.

And Twyla does. Her lips are cold too, a little chapped, but they’re the best thing Alexis has ever felt. Kissing Twyla feels like seeing the sun set over the ocean: beautiful and heart-stoppingly _big_ , but familiar too. Familiar like Alexis has done it a thousand times before, in a thousand lifetimes. It’s not thrilling the way a kiss with someone she’s been yearning for for so long usually is: she just feels like she’s meant to be here, to be doing this, and to be doing this with _her_. 

Twyla’s fingers press at the back of her neck as she deepens the kiss, and suddenly Alexis doesn’t have the space in her mind to philosophize because all she can feel, all she can think is _Twyla._ Alexis nips at Twyla’s bottom lip and swallows the gasp that Twyla lets out in response. 

Alexis is wrapping her fingers in Twyla’s hair and Twyla is backing her up against the railing and kissing her senseless when the sliding door to the balcony begins to open and they jump apart, cheeks red.

“Twyla, honey, can you show me how to run the hot water in the shower again? I can’t sleep.”

Twyla glances from Alexis and then back to her mother. She nods. “Yeah, mom.” She takes a step toward the door and pauses. “Meet me in the living room?” she asks Alexis quietly.

“Yeah,” Alexis answers breathlessly. Twyla’s hopeful smile is the prettiest thing Alexis has ever seen.

Alexis goes inside and sits on Twyla’s couch, twisting her hands nervously. Twyla had seemed to like the kissing - she seemed to _really_ like the kissing - but what if she regretted it? Or worse, what if she just wanted sex, and didn’t actually want to be with Alexis? Alexis wouldn’t be able to do that, not without breaking her own heart in the process. Luckily she doesn’t have too much time alone with these spiraling thoughts before Twyla is walking back out and carefully sitting next to her.

“So,” Twyla says. She sounds as nervous as Alexis feels.

“So,” Alexis responds, glancing up at Twyla through her lashes. Twyla giggles, still blushing, and suddenly Alexis isn’t nervous anymore. She can’t even remember what she was worrying about. She just grins, leaning forward to kiss Twyla’s cheek. Twyla turns her head, catching Alexis’s lips before she can pull away. Alexis can feel Twyla smiling against her mouth, and it makes her smile too. Alexis gives Twyla one, two, three quick kisses before she pulls away just slightly, resting their foreheads together. They’re quiet for a moment, but Alexis can’t be patient twice in one evening - especially not when something so important might be at stake. “You mean a lot to me, Twyla. You know that.”

Twyla’s arms wrap around Alexis’s shoulders. “I know that,” she confirms. “You mean a lot to me too.” She kisses Alexis again, letting it linger. “Let me take you on a date.” She kisses Alexis, soft and slow, and Alexis’s chest, as it often does around Twyla, feels like it could burst. 

“Okay,” Alexis whispers when Twyla pulls away again. Twyla’s eyes are closed, her arms still wrapped around Alexis, as if to hold her there. Twyla doesn’t need to worry - there’s nowhere she’d rather be. 

\-----

“So how did it go yesterday?” David asks as he flips through the book Alexis bought him. He’d been sound asleep when she’d come home the night before, which was probably for the best since she was so keyed up she isn’t sure she could have formed a sentence.

“Oh, fine. Twyla’s mom is nice. The bookstore was cute, we should go with Stevie sometime.” She pauses, just for a split second. “Also _TwylaandIkissed_.” Alexis says in a rush.

David closes his book with an almost absurd calmness, setting it to the side. He rests his hands in his lap and stares at her expectantly, a single eyebrow raised.

“Sorry, I didn’t quite catch that. What did you just say to me?”

“Twyla and I, like, we, um, kissed.” Alexis’s cheeks are flaming, and she has to look away from David’s incredulous expression.

“Hello?!” he exclaims.

Alexis shrugs helplessly. 

“Okay, well, why are you being so weird about it? Was it bad?”

“No!” Alexis nearly shrieks. “No,” she continues at a more reasonable volume, “it was really good. It’s just… really new, I guess?”

David nods slowly. “Okay. Do you think it’s gonna, like, go anywhere?”

Alexis smiles now, twisting her blanket between her fingers. “Yeah. I hope so. We’re going on a date next weekend.”

David gasps and throws a pillow at her, which she catches easily and sets in her lap. 

“Finally!” he exclaims dramatically, grabbing his other pillow and whacking her with it repeatedly.

“Hey!” Alexis laughs, using the pillow in her lap to block the blows. 

David stops, now just sitting on his bed and smiling at her teasingly. “I like this for you.”

Alexis rolls her eyes at him, but she can’t stop smiling.

\-----

The week passes by in a blur of work and runs and stopping by the cafe to see Twyla, and suddenly it’s Saturday evening.

When she had texted Twyla about the dress code for their date, all she’d said was “something nice” so after tearing through everything she owned with David she is now wearing a shiny silver dress that goes down to her mid-thigh and a pair of black heels. David pinned her hair into a braided updo, and Alexis carefully applied her makeup. 

Now she’s pacing their room as David watches from his bed. 

“You need to relax, Alexis. It’s just Twyla.”

Alexis nods. “Mhmm.” She continues pacing, but she does actually feel a little better now. “Just Twyla.”

“You’ve been alone with her a million times, right?”

“Right. No, yeah, you’re right.” Alexis sighs, plopping down onto David’s bed next to him. 

Just then there’s a knock at the door and Alexis’s eyes widen, looking to David. “Get the door, Allie! It’s gonna be great.” 

Alexis shimmies, trying to get out her nervous energy, then grabs her purse and walks to the door. She almost drops her purse again when she opens it and sees Twyla.

Twyla is wearing a red dress with a halter cut, her hair down in waves. 

“Hi,” Alexis breathes.

“Hi,” Twyla responds softly.

“You look _breathtaking_ , Twy,” Alexis says sincerely. 

Twyla’s cheeks pinken and she glances down at her feet. “Thank you, Alexis. So do you.” She looks back up at Alexis. “Are you ready?”

“Yeah, babe. Lead the way.” 

\-----

Twyla takes her to a place in Elmdale she’s never been to before, a relatively upscale little bistro. It’s… really nice, actually. It honestly feels out of place for Elmdale, but Alexis doesn’t mention that. 

They order a glass of wine each with their food, sipping it as they wait. It’s a little awkward, trying to figure out how to interact on a date instead of just at a casual dinner, but Alexis figures maybe it doesn’t have to be much different. 

“So. Tell me about work. You had to go in this morning to deal with something, right?” 

And Twyla starts talking, and everything is fine again. Conversation flows easily between them as it always does, except now Alexis can hold Twyla’s hand on the table and look at her as much as she wants without worrying that Twyla will notice. She wants Twyla to notice. She wants her to know just how beautiful Alexis thinks she is.

\-----

They have a nice dinner, and on the way home Twyla turns down the music. “Do you wanna come over?” she asks shyly. “I have a bottle of wine.”

“Yeah, babe. That sounds nice.”

Twyla smiles over at her, and Alexis can’t help but reach over and stroke her fingers over Twyla’s hand on the steering wheel. Twyla lets go, threading their fingers together and bringing Alexis’s hand up to her lips.

Alexis laughs softly. “Hey!” she exclaims without any venom, “That’s what I was gonna do.”

Twyla still hasn’t stopped smiling. She moves their hands toward Alexis and Alexis untangles their fingers, opening Twyla’s hand up gently and placing a long, slow kiss to the center of her palm. Alexis hears Twyla's breathing become shaky. 

“You okay?” Alexis asks against her skin.

“Yeah. I’m perfect.”

“Yes,” Alexis answers with certainty, kissing her palm again. "You are."

\-----

Twyla smiles at Alexis a little shyly as she passes her a glass of the wine she just poured.

“I hope the wine is okay. I, um, asked David to help me pick it out.”

Alexis melts. “Babe, I’m sure it’s perfect.”

They tap their glasses together and take a sip. It is perfect - Alexis will have to thank David later. 

Twyla is looking at her expectantly, so Alexis grins. “It’s delish, Twy. Thank you. For the wine, and for dinner, and for asking me on a date. I’m so happy.”

Twyla’s smile is so bright that Alexis feels like she’s looking into the sun. “I’m happy too,” Twyla says, and then without any conscious decision being made Alexis is standing up and rounding the table and leaning down to kiss Twyla softly. She hears a soft _clink_ as Twyla sets her wine glass down and then two hands are on her shoulders, pushing just a bit as Twyla uses them as leverage to stand up. Even when they’re both barefoot, Twyla is several inches shorter than her which Alexis finds incredibly endearing. She wraps her arms around Twyla’s waist, holding her close. 

Twyla presses up onto her toes, kissing Alexis more firmly, and then she’s walking Alexis backward carefully until her back bumps up against a counter. Alexis lets out a surprised sound that makes Twyla dig her fingers into Alexis’s skin a little deeper, and holy _shit_ , Alexis can’t believe how good this feels, and they’ve barely even done anything yet. Twyla coaxes Alexis’s mouth open, kissing her deeply, and Alexis lets her hands slide down until they’re just at the base of Twyla’s back, her pinkies just barely stroking over her ass. Twyla’s hands move down from her shoulders and brush the sides of Alexis’s breasts as Alexis arches into her. Twyla hesitates, so Alexis pulls back from the kiss just the tiniest bit.

“You can touch me, Twy.”

Twyla sighs into Alexis’s mouth, letting a thumb rub over her nipple. Alexis moans, already aching with the want of it all, and it only intensifies as Twyla begins kissing a trail down her neck while she keeps playing with Alexis’s nipples. Alexis lets her hands slip down further, giving Twyla’s ass a firm squeeze. 

Twyla gasps and her hips jerk forward. Alexis shifts slightly, just enough to move her thigh in between Twyla’s legs, pressing carefully upwards as she squeezes Twyla’s ass again, encouraging her to move her hips. Twyla does, her head falling back with a groan as she grinds up on Alexis’s thigh. It’s a little easier to think straight without Twyla kissing her neck, so Alexis returns the favor by worshiping every part of Twyla that she can reach: licking a strip of her neck, tugging her earlobe between her teeth, pressing hot, open-mouthed kisses to the freckles that are so beautifully splayed across her shoulders. Twyla is letting out the prettiest little whimpers, her hands holding Alexis’s waist tightly. 

“God, baby, you’re so gorgeous,” Alexis says against Twyla’s neck. She can hear the want in her voice, and Twyla must too, because she stops her movement and pulls away just enough to look Alexis in the eye. The lipstick she’d been wearing earlier is smudged around her lips a little, and Alexis has the brief thought that she should buy her the good kind that stayed on Alexis’s lips for three full days when she was on the run in Costa Rica, but then decides that it wouldn’t be nearly as hot as seeing the evidence of their kisses on Twyla’s skin. She lifts her hand to cup Twyla’s chin, smudging a bit of the lipstick further with her thumb. Twyla’s mouth is parted slightly, her panting breaths ghosting across Alexis’s hand. 

“Do you want to go to the bedroom?” Twyla asks, and Alexis could cry because she can’t remember the last time someone asked her that and actually meant it as a question rather than just a statement. 

“Yes,” Alexis answers simply, leaning in to kiss Twyla once, firmly. Twyla pulls back with a smile and takes Alexis’s hand, leading her upstairs and into the bedroom. 

Standing at the foot of her bed, Twyla turns around again, leaning upward to kiss Alexis gently. Her fingers brush the back of Alexis’s neck and then slip purposefully under the neckline of her dress. 

“Can I take this off?” she murmurs. Alexis nods and turns around, allowing Twyla to unzip it. When she turns back, Twyla turns too and Alexis carefully slides her zipper down, fingers brushing against her spine. She notes that her freckles extend as far down as she can see, and she can’t wait for more to be revealed. She presses a kiss between her shoulder blades, making Twyla shiver.

When Twyla turns back her smile is soft, and Alexis can’t help but kiss it. Twyla kisses back, gently at first then increasingly passionately, grasping at Alexis. They manage to get their dresses off and Alexis walks Twyla backward a couple of steps until she falls to sit on the bed with a huff. Alexis gazes down at her, admiring her flushed cheeks, her heaving chest. She could look at her forever, but then Twyla reaches out to her and she is powerless to resist. She lets Twyla pull her over her as Twyla scoots backwards until she’s lying back on her pillows. 

Alexis brushes a piece of hair off Twyla’s cheek, and suddenly things are soft again. Twyla turns her head, kissing her hand. Gazing up at Alexis, Twyla smiles. “Hi.”

Alexis breathes out a laugh. “Hi, baby.”

Twyla’s hands come up to cup her face, thumbs brushing over her cheekbones. “Kiss me,” Twyla says, and Alexis does. They keep kissing, softly at first and then increasingly frantic, as they each slip out of their bras and their bare chests are finally pressed together. Twyla gasps into Alexis’s mouth and suddenly Alexis needs to hear more, hear every sound Twyla is capable of making for her. 

She pulls her lips away from Twyla’s with a _pop_ and begins kissing down her chin and neck, stopping at her breast and flicking her tongue over her nipple. 

Twyla squirms, moaning and pressing her hand against the back of Alexis’s head. “ _God,_ Lex,” she whines when Alexis scrapes her teeth over it carefully. She presses a soothing kiss there and looks up at Twyla, whose eyes are lidded. 

“Can I go down on you?”

Twyla closes her eyes briefly, as if overwhelmed. “Fuck,” she breathes. “Yeah, if you - if you want to.”

Alexis pushes up on an elbow to give her a long, slow kiss. “I want to,” she murmurs against Twyla’s lips, and then she’s kissing down her body again, pulling her underwear off as she goes. Soon she has her arms hooked under Twyla’s thighs, hands pressing into her hips with Twyla spread open so beautifully for her. She kisses her thigh and glances up for confirmation one more time. Twyla nods easily, her right hand moving down to tangle with Alexis’s left. 

Alexis is suddenly fiercely grateful that her hair is pinned up as she leans in, licking a strip straight up through Twyla’s wetness. She can’t help but moan at the taste of her. Twyla spreads her legs even further in response, giving Alexis better access. Alexis sweeps back and forth over Twyla’s clit with just the tip of her tongue teasingly. The gasp that Twyla lets out at this is shaky, and it sends a wave of heat straight to Alexis’s core. Alexis increases the pressure of her tongue a bit, circling around the edges of Twyla’s clit as she gasps and writhes above her.

After a few minutes of this Twyla is letting out a symphony of beautiful, breathy moans, her hand holding Alexis's squeezing tightly and the other pressing the back of Alexis's head firmly into her pussy. 

"F-fuck, Alexis," Twyla says through a moan. It's the best thing Alexis has ever heard, maybe. Alexis hums in response, relishing the way that Twyla's hips jerk up when she does. "Inside me. Please."

Alexis can't help but moan, slipping her right hand between them and swirling two fingers briefly around the wetness she finds there before she presses them in slowly. Twyla sighs and presses toward them until Alexis is in as deep as she can go. She begins to move in slow, deep strokes that have Twyla groaning and moving along with the motion of her hand. 

Alexis returns to Twyla's clit which is waiting for her, pink and swollen, and she sucks it gently into her mouth. Twyla lets out a sharp cry at this, tangling her fingers into Alexis's hair and tugging gently upwards. 

"Kiss me," she says, her voice tight and desperate. "Kiss me." 

Alexis certainly didn't need to be told twice. She keeps up the motion of her fingers inside Twyla but moves so she's hovering over her, holding herself up with the hand that Twyla had just let go of. 

Twyla wastes no time in wrapping her arms around Alexis, tugging her close and kissing her hot and dirty. 

"Harder, Lex. Fuck me harder," she pants into Alexis's mouth, and Alexis can't stop the pitiful moan from coming out of her. She does what Twyla asked her to, speeding her hand up and pressing in as deep as she can. Twyla is moaning on every exhale now, her thighs shaking on either side of Alexis. Alexis moves her thumb so it nudges against Twyla's clit with every movement. 

" _God,_ Alexis, fuck, I'm so close -" Twyla is saying on a whine, and Alexis presses kisses down her cheek and neck.

"Come for me, Twy," Alexis says, her own voice shaking from the overwhelming combination of arousal and ardent love she’s feeling. She watches Twyla's face as her hips jerk one last time before she freezes with a sharp cry, her mouth stretched open. Then she's moving again, her hips grinding into Alexis's hand as she rides out her orgasm, whimpering. A few seconds later she's twitching every time Alexis's thumb nudges her clit and she turns to kiss Alexis softly, her hand on Alexis's cheek. 

Alexis kisses back just as softly. She moves just a bit so she's laying on her side, relieving her shaking left arm. Her right hand, however, is still buried in Twyla, and Twyla seems to be in no rush to push her away. Careful not to brush her oversensitive clit, Alexis curls her fingers, right where she knows she needs them. Twyla lets out a ragged moan into Alexis's mouth. 

"Can you go again?" Alexis asks against Twyla's lips. 

Twyla shudders and nods. "God, yeah. I think I could go all night with you."

Alexis exhales a shaky breath, her lips curling into an involuntary grin as she begins to move her fingers with more purpose. "Let's find out.”

\-----

They don’t make it all night, it turns out, but they make a valiant effort. 

Some time after they first fell into bed together (an hour? two? Alexis has no idea), they’re both sweaty and sated. Alexis’s limbs feel like gelatin, and she assumes that Twyla’s do too based on the nearly boneless way she’d collapsed on top of her afterward. Twyla’s still half on her now, head pressed against Alexis’s chest, arm thrown over Alexis’s waist. Alexis’s own arm is wrapped around Twyla’s back, her hand rubbing soft, slow circles.

“You okay, baby?” Alexis murmurs into the top of Twyla’s head.

“Yeah. More than okay.” She pulls away a bit, settling down on her side next to Alexis. She reaches forward to tuck a strand of hair that had slipped out of Alexis’s braids back behind her ears. Alexis has to swallow down the rush of tenderness she feels at both the touch and the look in Twyla’s eyes as she does it. “Are you okay?” The look in Twyla’s eyes shifts to something uncertain and before Alexis can answer the question Twyla is speaking again in a rush. “I hope you didn’t feel pressured or anything, I promise I didn’t bring you back here just for this, I just -” 

Before Twyla can work herself up anymore Alexis cuts her words off with the sweetest, surest kiss she can manage. Twyla stops talking in favor of kissing back, and Alexis can’t help but smile against her lips. “I’m okay, babe. I’m more than okay.”

“So you don’t… regret it? Or think we rushed things?”

“Twyla. I could never regret this.” Alexis pulls back so she can look Twyla in the eye. “And honestly, it doesn’t feel like we rushed anything. I think this has been a long time coming.”

Twyla nods seriously, staring into Alexis’s eyes. She exhales what sounds like a quick, nervous breath, then lays back down next to Alexis. “I think so too,” she says. Then, “Alexis?”

“Yeah?”

“Do you believe in soulmates?” 

Alexis smiles up at the ceiling, blindly reaching over until her hand is intertwined with one of Twyla’s. “I don’t know,” she answers honestly. “But if I have one, I hope it’s you. I _believe_ it’s you.”

Twyla presses a lingering kiss to Alexis’s bare shoulder. “Me too. Can I tell you something weird?”

Now Alexis rolls over so they’re facing each other, their breaths mingling in the small space between them on the pillow. “Anything.”

Twyla’s eyes are a bit more guarded than they normally are, as if she’s afraid of how Alexis will react. “I feel like I’ve known you forever.”

“That’s not weird, Twy. I feel that way too.”

“Really?” she asks breathlessly, her face now open in its wonder.

“Really. I knew that you were important to me the moment we met that first day at the café. And after a few months it was like… like I couldn’t remember what it was like to not love you. When I thought back, it felt like it had always been there. That _you_ had always been there.”

“Alexis,” Twyla breathes, and a sudden twist of fear makes her blood run cold. She just told Twyla she loved her after their _first date_. Fuck. Some of her panic must show on her face because Twyla is shaking her head, reaching to cradle Alexis’s face in her hands. “It’s okay, it’s okay. I love you, Alexis. I think I’ve loved you forever.”

Twyla blurs in front of her as Alexis’s eyes swim with tears so she blinks them away. She doesn’t want to miss a second of this - a second of Twyla. Twyla’s eyes are wet too, her smile quivering. A tear slips down Twyla’s freckled cheek and Alexis wipes it away. 

“Don’t cry, baby,” Alexis says, her voice choked. Even as she says this, she feels her own tears begin to fall.

Twyla laughs wetly. “It’s happy crying. _You_ don’t cry!”

Alexis laughs too, leaning forward to kiss her again. “It’s happy crying.”

Twyla makes a sound halfway between a laugh and a sob and kisses Alexis again, and again, and again. “I love you, Lex,” she says between kisses. “I love you. I love you.”

Alexis pushes up and over so she’s straddling Twyla’s waist, leaning down to kiss her firmly. “I love you, Twyla. I love you so much.” Their kisses are open-mouthed, wet and desperate, and Alexis feels a wave of arousal shoot through her despite her exhaustion. Twyla’s hips are already seeking the pressure of Alexis above her, and Alexis can’t help but giggle into Twyla’s mouth. 

Maybe they’ll make it all night after all. 

\-----

That year, Alexis isn’t even angry when her parents don’t light the menorah with them on the first day of Chanukah. David is there, like he always is, and Stevie and Twyla come too. 

They sit on David’s bed while David and Alexis light the first candle, and when Alexis turns around Twyla is smiling at her so lovingly that she could kiss her right there in front of everyone. 

Instead, she smiles back and admires the way the four flames in the window are reflected in the green of Twyla’s eyes. 

“Chag Chanukah sameach,” David says.

Alexis repeats it, and she and David laugh as Twyla and Stevie try to repeat it as well, the Hebrew words awkward in their mouths. 

“It’ll get easier every year,” Alexis says reassuringly. 

Twyla grins like she’s been given a gift. 

\-----

They spend Christmas with Twyla’s family, which is about as chaotic as it sounds.

Alexis is… out of her depth, to put it lightly. She’d never had anything like this - she occasionally saw her aunt on her mother’s side as a kid, and she knew her father’s parents while they were alive, but that was about it. It had always been just the four of them, and their holiday parties were filled with people that Alexis suspected even her parents hardly knew. It was more a publicity stunt than anything, really. 

But Twyla’s family wasn’t like that. They all seemed so… comfortable with each other. They teased and joked but there was none of the coldness that Alexis normally associated with those things, just an easy warmth. Alexis couldn’t figure out if she craved it or feared it. Maybe both. 

Twyla is helping with dinner, so Alexis stands off to one side awkwardly until one of Twyla’s many cousins places a cup of truly disgusting, heavily spiked eggnog in her hands and reels her into a conversation. 

A while later, Alexis’s cheeks are flushed from the significant amount of whiskey that she’d consumed, and she lets slip that she’d taken piano lessons in her youth. 

“Oh my god,” Twyla’s cousin exclaims. “Will you play for us?”

“Oh, I don’t really remember any songs,” Alexis says quickly. This is mostly true. The majority of the songs she knows are Chanukah songs or Beyoncé hits (which she learned for David, of course). She doesn’t really think either are particularly appropriate for a Christmas dinner.

“Can you read music? We have a song book that our Nana bought when she thought someone would learn, but no one ever did.”

Alexis admits that she can, and begrudgingly lets herself be led to the old piano in the corner. This isn’t really something she wants to do, but her intense desire to be liked by Twyla’s family wins out over her hesitation. 

Luckily her years of lessons stuck with her pretty well, and within a couple minutes she’s playing Jingle Bell Rock beneath the raucous singing of Twyla’s extended family. Twyla comes to lean on the wall next to her, her smile a soft thing. She’s wearing a Christmas-themed apron and holding a rag in her hands. There’s a smudge of flour on one of her cheeks. Alexis has never seen anyone more beautiful. 

“Damn, Twyla,” another one of Twyla’s cousins says to her after the song (and the cheering) ends. “Your girl can do it all!”

“Yeah.” Twyla is speaking to him, but she is looking right at Alexis. “My girl really can.”

**~2018~**

31 years old and David still hates driving. Less so than he had when they were teenagers, but enough that he had annoyed Alexis into driving him to Toronto for a meeting on a Friday morning. Patrick was away for the whole week visiting his family, and their dad was keeping Stevie busy with Rosebud stuff, so it fell to Alexis. She doesn’t mind, really, she is thrilled that David’s business is doing well enough to consider expanding, but she had been looking forward to doing nothing all weekend. 

David had convinced her to make a weekend out of it, a little “sibling time” since they see each other less now that Alexis spends most of her time at Twyla’s. They’d never had “sibling time” before, which Alexis was quick to point out, but David had just waved his hand through the air like her argument was an annoying bug. 

So here she is, driving down a rural highway headed toward the city. Thankfully David had at least rented them a car, so they were in a nice new Honda instead of the family’s ancient car. David has Beyoncé blasting through the speakers, shimmying his shoulders to the rhythm of “Love on Top”. It’s a beautiful summer day; they have the windows up because there’s no way they’d let the wind mess up their hair, but it’ll be good weather for walking around the city later.

Things were going well so far; she and David had only argued twice, and both were resolved quickly. It was shaping up to be a genuinely good weekend.

It seems like good things rarely last long when it comes to the two of them.

\----- 

They’re still on that same stretch of highway about an hour later. It’s the kind of two-lane highway that isn’t often travelled; they hadn’t passed another car for miles. David had finally ceded control of the music, so Alexis has one of her playlists on shuffle. David is absentmindedly staring through the windshield, probably getting himself worked up about the meeting he had scheduled that evening. 

Suddenly, Alexis hears a voice she hasn’t heard in years. 

“ _Stop! Get onto the right shoulder!”_

As always, she obeys without question, the tires screeching as she slams on the brakes and swerves to the right. David screams as he and Alexis jerk forward with the force of their stop.

“Alexis, wha -” David starts, his voice nearly a shriek, but he cuts himself off as a car coming toward them blows a tire, veering and crashing into the trees with the terrible sound of twisting metal on the same side of the road that they’re on. It stops only about 10 feet in front of them. 

Alexis is nearly hyperventilating between the shock of hearing the voice and seeing the crash, but her adrenaline carries her through the motions of unbuckling her seatbelt. 

“David, call 911,” she urges, opening her door and jogging over to the car. There’s a woman at the wheel who seems relatively okay, rubbing at her neck and trying to soothe a screaming child in the backseat. 

Alexis opens the passenger side door. “Are you two alright? My brother is calling 911 right now, help should be on the way.” 

The woman nods, but her hands are shaking. “Yeah, I’m - I think we’re okay. She’s just scared.” Alexis looks into the backseat, where a little girl who can’t be any older than five is sobbing in her car seat. 

“Hey, honey,” she says in the most soothing voice possible. “Everything’s gonna be okay. Let’s get you guys out of the car, yeah? The little girl just keeps sobbing. Alexis smiles at her as reassuringly as she can and turns back to the woman. “Come on, it looks like you might have to climb out this way.” The woman glances briefly at her door, which took the impact of the trees. She takes a shaky breath, nodding, and Alexis steps back so she can crawl out the passenger door. 

She goes to get the kid out of the car, and they stand there uncertainly. “I’ll check in with my brother and grab my phone. We’ll wait here with you, okay?” The woman nods gratefully, holding the girl tightly. 

\-----

An hour later, they’re back on the road, the woman and her daughter safely on their way to a mechanic.

After a few minutes of quiet, David speaks. 

“How did you know that was going to happen, Alexis?”

Alexis bites at the inside of her lip nervously. “What do you mean?”

“I _mean_ , how did you know that they would crash? There’s no way you could see them around the curve like that. You stopped before they were even that close.”

Alexis sighs. She could lie, say it was unrelated, that she thought she saw something in the road, but she was so damn tired of hiding. It had been 15 years and she hadn’t told anyone, not even Twyla who knew just about all of her darkest secrets. It was about time the truth came out, at least to David. They literally share a room, so it’s not like he can avoid her if he thinks she’s nuts.

“There’s… a voice. I’ve heard it since I was a teenager. Every time I’ve been in a situation where I, or someone else, will get hurt, it tells me what to do. And I know that sounds crazy, David, I _know_ , but it’s before I even know something. Before I _could_ know something, like just now. It told me to stop and get on the shoulder before I even knew there was a car coming. When I was 17 it told me I was allergic to pitted fruits before you even mentioned that you were. It’s always right, as far as I know, so I don’t question it.”

David doesn’t say anything for a moment, and Alexis’s stomach clenches with her anxiety again. 

“Do you remember when we went to Belize? And we were being stupid, day drinking on those cliffs?”

Alexis was so sure he was going to tell her she’s crazy that it takes her a moment to process the question. When she does she furrows her brow, trying to remember. “Yeah, I think so?”

“We were gonna jump. Like, we were pretty wasted and we just thought it would be fun.”’

“Oh yeah! But we didn’t end up jumping, right?”

“Right. Because you stopped me. I was about to and you started yelling at me, telling me no and pulling me back. You wouldn’t tell me why, but you looked really freaked out so I listened. The next morning I read on the news that someone jumped from those same cliffs and was bitten by a shark just a few hours after we were there.”

“Oh my god…”

“Yeah. Was that… was that the voice?”

“Yeah, it was. I’d totally forgotten about that.”

“So you knew there were sharks?”

“No. It isn’t really like that. Usually it doesn’t give me much detail, it just tells me what to do. Like just now, it said to stop and get onto the right shoulder, but it didn’t say why.”

David exhales a breath loudly, shaking his head. “That - wow.”

“Do… do you believe me?”

“Yeah. Of course I believe you.”

Alexis swallows past the lump in her throat, nodding. “Oh,” she says eloquently. 

David reaches over, touching her knee briefly. “Allie, I’m sorry you felt like you had to hide this for so long. You can tell me anything, okay? No matter how crazy it sounds. I won’t freak out.” Alexis shoots a wry glance at him, and he shakes his head quickly. “Well, I won’t freak out _too_ much. And I’ll get over it pretty quick, probably.”

Alexis laughs, feeling like she could float away with her relief. “Alright, David.”

The car is quiet for a few minutes save for the music that’s playing. “Sooo,” David says, drawing out the word like he’s going to gossip. “What do you think it is? The voice?”

Alexis taps her fingers on the steering wheel. 15 years and she still hadn’t found a good answer, so she shrugs. “I honestly have no idea. I’ve tried to google it, but I can’t find anyone who’s had a similar experience. Or if they have, they have a bunch of other ‘experiences’ too. Most of those people have some kind of diagnosed disorder, usually schizophrenia, but I don’t think that’s it for me. I’ve never had anything else I’d consider a symptom, and if the voice were a hallucination you’d think it’d be a little less choosy about when it shows up.”

David hums. “Yeah, that’s true.”

“Honestly, not to be all, like, X-Files about it, but maybe there is no scientific explanation.”

David grins at her in a lighthearted, teasing way. “So what, a guardian angel? A friendly alien has a chip in your skull? The ghost of a grandparent watching over you?” 

Alexis laughs. “I don’t know, maybe! I don’t think I’ll ever know.”

“Does it bother you?” David asks, his voice more serious now. “That you’ll never know?”

“It used to,” she answers honestly. “I used to resent it. But, I don’t know.” She thinks of Twyla, two years ago now, sitting in a shitty lawn chair outside their motel room, saying _it’s kind of nice to think_ that there was somewhere she was meant to end up. The memory makes her smile. Maybe this was the same kind of thing. “It doesn’t bother me anymore. It’s kind of nice to think that it keeps me safe, and keeps the people I care about safe too. Maybe it doesn’t matter what it is, it just matters that it _is_.”

“Damn,” David replies, and Alexis snorts, the tension in the car broken. David takes over the music again, and Alexis drives them steadily toward the city. 

\-----

“My dad wants to have a holiday party tonight,” Alexis says with a sigh. She’s sitting at her usual place at the counter, and Twyla is on the opposite side, filling a napkin dispenser. 

Twyla frowns faintly. “It’s a little late to plan a whole party, isn’t it?” 

“Yes! Exactly. He just barged into our room this morning and gave us all jobs to do. I’m supposed to do the guest list.”

“Well, you’ll be good at that!” 

Alexis rolls her eyes but still smiles, pleased by the compliment. “Will you be able to come?”

“Yeah, of course! The Jazzagals are supposed to carol at the senior’s center at 7:30, but I’ll stay until then.”

“Okay, baby. I’m gonna go pass invitations around.”

“Oh, you already wrote out invitations?” 

“Um, they’re more like verbal invitations? Like I’m telling them that they’re coming. That’s their invitation.” 

Twyla is clearly trying very hard not to laugh, so Alexis glares at her as she shrugs on her thick winter coat. “Aw, love, don’t be mad,” Twyla coos, reaching across the counter to help Alexis button her coat.

Alexis laughs, shaking her head. “I’ll see you tonight, Twy.” She gives Twyla a quick peck on the lips and wiggles her fingers in a wave before turning and heading into the biting December air.

\-----

Later that evening Alexis calls the café’s landline, frantically explaining to Twyla that her dad was heading there to get meatloaf now and she _had_ to keep him there while they get things set up.

(“ _But today isn’t meatloaf day,” Twyla had said slowly, brows furrowed._

 _“I know, I told him it’s - that’s_ not _the point babe!”)_

Alexis contacted what felt like the entire town of Schitt’s Creek to let them know that the party would be starting soon, and that she was _so_ sorry for the confusion, etc., and their parents’ room is full to bursting by the time Twyla comes from work. 

As soon as she steps in, Alexis can physically feel her stress melt away. “Twyla,” she says, wrapping her arms around her partner. 

“Hey, Lex. Everything looks beautiful.”

“Thank you!” David says smugly from next to them.

Alexis pulls away. “D’you need to change?” At Twyla’s nod, she grabs her hand and tugs her toward her and David’s room. “Come on, you can use our bathroom.” 

Alexis ends up following Twyla into the bathroom and sitting on the edge of the tub as she gets changed. The Jazzagals’ uniform for the night is black slacks and a black button up, which Twyla, naturally, looks amazing in. Unable to stay away for long, Alexis stands up to help her button up her shirt. 

Twyla grins. “Usually you’re the one getting me _out_ of my shirt, not into it,” she says lowly. 

Alexis smirks, kissing Twyla long and sweet. “Maybe later I can take it back off.” She takes a step back before she can get carried away, smoothing her hands down Twyla’s long sleeves. “You look beautiful, love.”

Twyla blushes, looking down. Alexis can’t believe they’ve been together for almost two years and she can still make her blush like this. She hopes she can keep doing it forever. “Thanks, Lex. Come on,” she adds, tugging Alexis out of the bathroom. “Your parents should be here soon."

“Oh my god,” David hisses when they get back. “Took you long enough.”

“David, relax,” Alexis commands. “First of all, we were gone for five minutes tops. Besides, everything is fine. The place looks great, okay? You did a great job. Everything is going to be great, as long as the menorah doesn’t catch that garland on fire.” Alexis inclines her head toward where the menorah had been placed on the dresser. Not the ideal spot, but they were afraid that if they put it in the window someone would bump into it and set themselves on fire. David huffs but seems pacified by her praise, just as Alexis thought he would.

“Sorry I missed the menorah, love,” Twyla says, leaning into Alexis’s side.

“Tomorrow,” Alexis says serenely, bending so she can press her temple against Twyla’s. After a moment, Alexis straightens. “Okay, Twy. Go put that cute lil’ scarf on and get ready to sing us a song. They should be here any second.”

Twyla nods, leaning in to kiss her. “Ew!” David says, swatting at them. “Don’t do that so close to me!”

Twyla laughs and walks away, knowing by now to stay out of these little tiffs. 

Alexis watches her go before turning on a heel toward David. “David, you and Patrick constantly look like you are cosplaying as ‘happy gay couple’ stock photos. I _don’t_ want to hear about PDA from you.” Stevie snorts into her wine as David gapes. 

“Um. Thanks?” Patrick says uncertainly.

Luckily, they’re all saved by the door opening and their parents walking in. 

“ _Merry Christmas!”_ Everyone exclaims, and Alexis can’t imagine thinking this even a year ago but she finds that the look on her father’s face makes it all worth it. 

He compliments the decorations as Alexis passes around Zhampagne, and when she’s done she comes over and kisses him on the cheek. She stays with him while her mother goes to rally the Jazzagals for a carol (in front of the wig wall, just as David had feared). 

It’s Twyla that starts off the first few bars of “Silent Night" on her own, beatific smile bright and beautiful as the candles on the menorah burning off to the side of the room. Alexis almost drops her wine glass, because she _knows_ that voice. 

And of course she knows her voice - she and Twyla have been together for almost two years, have been friends for almost three. She has heard Twyla’s voice in soothing low tones when Alexis was upset, crying out in ecstasy when they made love, and every variation in between. But this was different. 

The rest of the Jazzagals have joined in now, but Alexis barely hears them. How was it possible that she’s never noticed before?

But Alexis realizes that she’s never heard Twyla sing alone. Despite the endless amount of hours they’ve spent together, Alexis has never heard Twyla’s voice without anything covering it. Twyla sings all the time - in the shower, in the car, with the Jazzagals. But in the shower there’s the noise of running water, and in the car the music from the radio and Alexis’s own out of tune singing, and of course with the Jazzagals she’s just one voice of ten or twenty.

But now, hearing Twyla’s clear voice spreading through the room and into Alexis’s chest, she knows with an almost overwhelming certainty that she’s right. All those years, it had been Twyla’s voice that had come to her.

The song ends without Alexis even noticing and Twyla walks over to her, her cheeks pink from the excitement of singing. “We’re going over to the senior’s center now. Are you coming home tonight or staying with your family?”

Despite the truly incredible realization she just had, all Alexis feels is contentment. Alexis can do nothing but smile at Twyla, at this woman who she loves so much she aches with it. “I’ll come home. Text me when you get done, ‘kay?”

Twyla agrees, pressing a sweet kiss to Alexis’s lips. Everything about Twyla is sweet. Alexis feels like the luckiest person in the world. She can’t believe that she ended up here, in a motel room in a town with a stupid name that became her home, surrounded by the people she expected to hate who became her family. She thinks of the ring she has shoved far to the back of one of her dresser drawers in the next room. 

_Yes,_ she imagines telling the Alexis of two years ago, who had felt so untethered sitting next to Twyla outside these very rooms. _You believe in fate. Your fate is right in front of you, Lex, you just need to reach out to meet it. It’s her. It has always been her._

\-----

“I’m in the kitchen!” Twyla calls when she hears Alexis unlock the door.

Alexis slips off her shoes and heads further in the house. “Hey, Twy.”

“Hey! Do you want some hot chocolate? I’m in the mood for it.”

“That sounds good, thanks.” Twyla puts the kettle on and as soon as she’s done Alexis goes over to her, pulling her close. Twyla goes easily, tucking herself into Alexis.

“Was the party okay, babe?” Twyla asks from where her face is pressed against Alexis’s collarbone.

“Yeah. It was great. Thank you for keeping an eye on my dad.”

Twyla giggles, wrapping her arms more tightly around Alexis. “It wasn’t very hard. Just had to keep him talking.”

Alexis nods, kissing the top of Twyla’s head. After a moment Twyla pulls back, keeping her arms around Alexis’s waist. 

“What are you thinking about?” she asks as she kisses Alexis’s nose.

“I’m thinking about you,” Alexis answers honestly.

Twyla’s smile is tender now. “What about me, love?”

Alexis returns the smile, reaching up to cup Twyla’s cheek. “How lucky I am.” She leans in for a kiss, soft and slow. “How much I love you.”

“I love you,” Twyla whispers against Alexis’s mouth, stroking a hand up the open back of Alexis’s dress. 

They kiss for a few moments longer before Alexis pulls away. “I need to tell you something,” she says quietly, that familiar anxiety coiling in her stomach once again.

Twyla’s brows furrow a bit, but she nods. “Okay. Want the hot cocoa first?”

Alexis grins, nodding. Twyla relaxes at that and quickly mixes up two mugs full of hot chocolate, adding extra mini marshmallows to the top for Alexis. Alexis thanks her and they sit down at the kitchen table together. 

Alexis sighs, holding the mug in both of her hands and willing the heat coming through the ceramic to distract her from her fear. “Okay. When I was 13, I tried to run away from home on the night of my parents’ holiday party.”

And she tells her the whole story, every single detail that she can remember. Twyla listens intently. 

“I never told you because it didn’t really matter, you know? It doesn’t really have a reason to come around anymore, so I mostly forget about it.”

Twyla nods. “That… makes sense,” she says slowly. “So, what changed then? Why are you telling me now?” 

She doesn’t seem at all upset, just curious, so Alexis takes a fortifying sip of her hot cocoa (which is now closer to room temperature cocoa) and answers her with a question instead. 

“Did you know that tonight was the first time I’ve ever heard you sing alone? With no other voices, and no background noise?”

Twyla shakes her head. 

“It was. You started singing “Silent Night”, and something clicked into place. I knew your voice. But not just from the last few years together Twy. From the last 15 years of my life.” Alexis’s voice is shaking, but she keeps on. “I’ve known your voice since that day I ran away from home. Every time I was stopped before I got hurt, or I stopped someone else from getting hurt, your voice is the one that came to me. It’s always been you, Twyla. I don’t know how, but it has.”

Twyla’s eyes are wide now. “Oh my god, Alexis…” she breathes. 

Alexis nods. “I know.”

They’re quiet for a few moments, each lost in their own thoughts. Alexis’s eyes fly up to meet Twyla’s when Twyla reaches across the table to take her hand. “Soulmates,” Twyla says simply. 

“Huh?” 

Twyla laughs, shaking her head as a smile grows on her face. “Remember after our first date, when I asked you if you believed in soulmates? And we talked about how we both felt like we already knew each other? How we both felt like we had _always_ known each other?”

“Yeah.”

“Yeah,” Twyla echoes. “So that’s it. That has to be it, right?”

“I was thinking about that too. Do you remember when I asked you if you believed in fate?” Twyla nods. “You said that it was nice to think that there’s somewhere we belong. I think I even knew then that you were right, but I definitely know now. There _is_ somewhere we belong, and it’s together. My whole life I was so desperate to find a place where I belonged, but I was looking in all the wrong places. And then I came here. I met you, and it was like everything was clear to me for the first time. I’ve travelled back and forth across the world to find something that I didn’t even have a name for and I finally found it. I finally found _you_.”

Twyla is crying, holding Alexis’s hand tightly. “I’m so happy, Alexis, I’m so happy that you found me.”

Alexis nods, starting to cry too. She pulls her hand away from Twyla’s gently and digs down into her purse that sits next to her on the floor. She curls her fingers around the small box and gets up, moving around the table to kneel in front of Twyla.

She opens the box, and Twyla gasps, covering her mouth with her hand as she lets out a single sob. 

“Twyla, I love you so much. Meeting you was the best thing to ever happen to me, and I really, really want to spend the rest of my life with you. Will you marry me?” Twyla had started nodding halfway through, and now she pushes her chair backwards so she can fall on her knees in front of Alexis. 

“Yes,” she says, giving Alexis a messy, tear-soaked kiss. “Yes, of _course_ I’ll marry you. I love you, Alexis, I love you so much.”

Now Alexis sobs, trying to blink past her tears so she can slip Twyla’s ring onto her finger. It’s beautiful, in Alexis’s opinion, even though it isn’t really her style. It’s Twyla’s style, and that’s what matters. It’s rose gold, the back of the ring a simple band and the front fashioned into two vines, each leaf on the vines inlaid with a small diamond. The vines come around to hold a larger round diamond. It fits Twyla perfectly, thank goodness. She’d gotten it in Toronto this past summer when she went with David, and she really didn’t want to deal with taking it all the way back to the jeweler for a resizing. 

“God, Alexis, it’s perfect,” Twyla says, sniffling. 

“ _You’re_ perfect,” Alexis answers, pulling her in by the shoulders and kissing her again. 

Twyla laughs, grabbing Alexis’s hand and tugging her up. “Come on,” she says, tugging her toward the stairs. Alexis smirks, expecting Twyla to take her to bed. She’s surprised when they stop in the bedroom and Twyla holds up a single finger. “I have something to give you.” She goes into the closet and Alexis hears some things being shuffled around. A moment later she’s back, and she’s holding something behind her. She gets down on one knee.

“Twy, what - “

“Shhh,” Twyla scolds with a grin. “I was going to wait to give you this until New Year’s Eve, but I think it only makes sense to give it to you now.” From behind her, Twyla holds out a small box. She opens it up to reveal a beautiful white gold diamond ring. It’s simpler than Twyla’s is: just a thin band with a large diamond in the center. It’s perfect. It’s exactly what Alexis would have chosen for herself, which is just a testament to how well Twyla knows her. “Alexis Rose, will you be my wife?” 

Alexis can’t stop smiling, her cheeks aching with it as she nods, her tears already spilling over again. If her mascara makes it through all of this intact she is going to have to buy into the company’s stock. “Yes, Twyla. Of course I’ll be your wife.” She holds out her hand and Twyla slips the ring on. It fits perfectly; it feels like it’s meant to be there. 

When she looks back up at Twyla, she’s crying too, a huge smile on her face. “I love you.”

“I love you too.” 

Alexis reaches for Twyla’s hands, pulling her to her feet and tangling her fingers into her hair, kissing her. Their teeth click together as Twyla pushes Alexis back onto the bed because neither of them can stop smiling. Alexis tugs on Twyla’s hands again until she gets the hint and climbs on top of her. Once she’s there she rests her forehead against Alexis’s, breathing a little heavily. Her ring is cold where it brushes against Alexis’s cheek. 

“So,” Twyla says coquettishly, “Does my fiancée want to help me take this shirt off?”

Alexis laughs into the space between them, immediately reaching forward to start unbuttoning Twyla’s shirt. “Your fiancée would like nothing more,” Alexis answers.

Twyla kisses her, impossibly gentle, and her mouth tastes like hot cocoa and the Zhampagne from the party and _Twyla_. 

Twyla curls her arms around Alexis’s shoulders and it feels like coming home. 

_It feels,_ Alexis thinks as she pushes Twyla’s shirt off her shoulders, _like fate_. 

**Author's Note:**

> A HUGE thank you to the folks who are running this fest. It was such a joy to contribute <3


End file.
